Generating Self-Signed Certificates for the HTTPS and Console Proxy Endpoints

Use the generate-certs command of the cell management tool to generate self-signed SSL certificates for the HTTPS and Console Proxy endpoints.

Each VMware Cloud Director server group must support two SSL endpoints: one for the HTTPS service and another for the console proxy service. The HTTPS service endpoint supports the VMware Cloud Director Service Provider Admin Portal, the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal, and the VMware Cloud Director API. The remote console proxy endpoint supports VMRC connections to vApps and VMs.

The generate-certs command of the cell management tool automates the Create Self-Signed SSL Certificates for VMware Cloud Director on Linux procedure.

To generate new self-signed SSL certificates, use a command line with the following form:

cell-management-tool generate-certs options

Table 1. Cell Management Tool Options and Arguments, generate-certs Subcommand

Option	Argument	Description
--help (-h)	None	Provides a summary of available commands in this category.
--expiration (-x)	days-until-expiration	Number of days until the certificates expire. Defaults to 365
--issuer (-i)	name=value [, name=value, ...]	X.509 distinguished name of the certificate issuer. Defaults to CN=FQDN. where FQDN is the fully qualified domain name of the cell or its IP address if no fully qualified domain name is available. If you specify multiple attribute and value pairs, separate them with commas and enclose the entire argument in quotation marks.
--key-size (-s)	key-size	Size of key pair expressed as an integer number of bits. Defaults to 2048. Key sizes smaller than 1024 are no longer supported per NIST Special Publication 800-131A.
--key-password	key-password	Password for the generated private key.
--cert	cert	Path to the generated certificate file.
--key	key	Path to the generated private key file.

Creating Self-Signed Certificates

Both of these examples assume a certificate file at /tmp/cell.pem and a corresponding private key file at /tmp/cell.key that has the password kpw. These files are created if they do not exist already.

This example creates the new certificates using the defaults. The issuer name is set to CN=Unknown. The certificate uses the default 2048-bit key length and expires one year after creation.

[root@cell1 /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin]# ./cell-management-tool generate-certs --cert /tmp/cell.pem --key /tmp/cell.key --key-password kpw
New certificate created and written to /tmp/cell.pem
New private key created and written to /tmp/cell.key

This example specifies custom values for key size and issuer name. The issuer name is set to CN=Test, L=London, C=GB. The new certificate for the HTTPS connection has a 4096-bit key and expires 90 days after creation.

[root@cell1 /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin]# ./cell-management-tool generate-certs --cert /tmp/cell.pem --key /tmp/cell.key --key-password kpw -i "CN=Test, L=London, C=GB" -s 4096 -x 90
New certificate created and written to /tmp/cell.pem
New private key created and written to /tmp/cell.key

Important: The certificate and private key files, and the directory in which they are stored, must be readable by the user vcloud.vcloud. The VMware Cloud Director installer creates this user and group.