A set of CLIs allows you to manage VMCA (VMware Certificate Authority), VECS (VMware Endpoint Certificate Store), and VMware Directory Service (vmdir). The vSphere Certificate Manager utility supports many related tasks as well, but the CLIs are required for manual certificate management and for managing other services.
You normally access the CLI tools for managing certificates and associated services by using SSH to connect to the appliance shell. See the VMware knowledge base article at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2100508 for more information.
Manual Certificate Replacement gives examples for replacing certificates using CLI commands.
| CLI | Description | See |
|---|---|---|
| certool | Generate and manage certificates and keys. Part of VMCAD, the VMware Certificate Management service. | |
| vecs-cli | Manage the contents of VMware Certificate Store instances. Part of VMAFD. | vecs-cli Command Reference |
| dir-cli | Create and update certificates in VMware Directory Service. Part of VMAFD. | dir-cli Command Reference |
| sso-config | Some vCenter Single Sign-On configuration. In most cases, use either the vSphere Web Client or the vSphere Client. Use this command for two-factor authentication setup. | Command-line help. |
| service-control | Start or stop services, for example as part of a certificate replacement workflow. | Run this command to stop services before running other CLI commands. |
CLI Locations
By default, you find the CLIs in the following locations on each node.
If you run commands from a vCenter Server system with an external Platform Services Controller, you can specify the Platform Services Controller with the --server parameter.
