Connect-VIServer fails with Base-64 error

[korycoronado]

I am trying to connect to one of our vCenter instances after a PowerCLI upgrade.  I'm getting this error:

PS U:\> Connect-VIServer vCenterServer

Connect-VIServer : The input is not a valid Base-64 string as it contains a non-base 64 character, more than two padding characters, or an illegal character among the padding characters.

At line:1 char:1

+ Connect-VIServer vCenterServer

+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Connect-VIServer], FormatException

    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.FormatException,VMware.VimAutomation.ViCore.Cmdlets.Commands.ConnectVIServer

Has anyone else ever seen this that may have some clues as to what's wrong?  I know credentials are good and i've seen similar issues as this not related to powercli on other forums.  Of course those were mostly devs talking about string encoding and didn't provide much insight for this issue.

PS: in case it matters that's not the real server name. I've tried the UQDN, FQDN, and CNAME of the host all without luck so i'm guessing the name isn't an issue.

Env:

VMware PowerCLI 10.1.0 build 8346946

PowerShell 5.1.17134.228

vCenter Server VCSA 6.5.0.5500

[LucD]

Have a look at this thread PowerCLI 6.5.1 connect-viserver returns nothing

There the problem turned out to be a TLS issue.

[korycoronado]

Unfortunately not working for me.  I tried forcing ssl3 through tls 1.2.  with the following:

[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12

All protocols are enabled on my machine.  I'll head down the protocol/security stack path and see what I find.