vCenter Server service on Windows failed to start after a regular Windows maintenance reboot. The solution service certificates had expired a week prior to the reboot and went unnoticed. Upon trying to update the service certificates using the certificate-manager tool (as we've done numerous times in years past) for some reason the vim.eam service failed to update which caused the entire process to crash. Somehow I managed to reset the certificates using the 'Reset' operation in the certificate-manager tool, so most of the service certificates are now within valid time range, they are self-signed certificates. I've gone through the steps to change the machine cert and all service certs. I've created internal PKI certs for this purpose using the certificate-manager tool and completed the imports but I'm repeatedly tripped up by the vim.eam service failing to update.
So, long story short - vCenter server is down, my environment backups cannot run because they rely on vCenter server to be operational and I have unconsolidated snapshots from the backup job that was in operation when vCenter went offline - the backup job could not delete the snapshots and I now have file lock errors when attempting to consolidate the disks for that VM. The VM is still operational thankfully, however I foresee this quickly becoming a big problem for us.
I need to return my vCenter to an operational state ASAP. We are on the verge of a major hardware overhaul which includes buying all new vSphere licensing & upgrading our cluster to the latest editions and I need this configuration working.
Best guess I can make after reviewing the various log files is that the service(s) are failing to start due to the certificate failures, so if someone can help us to manually apply the necessary certificates (I already have various cert/key pair files generated by VPXD and signed by our internal CA for the purpose of these services) to the necessary stores and somehow force our way past the issue with the one service - this may return our vCenter services to an operational state. Optionally, somehow remove or skip the vim.eam service and fix that manually after vCenter is running (if this is at all a possibility).
Thank you in advance for any insight or assistance.
