The IBM Storage Management Console for Vmware vCenter adds a single-source of glass view into the IBM storage platform (in my case the StoreWize V7000) without leaving vCenter.

However, the default installation ships with an unsigned SSL Certificate that does not function well with IE9/vCenter. So at a minimum, you must use a self-signed SSL certificate to use it. IBM documents this problem here, but they don’t tell you how to fix it.

You will need:

• A self-signed Certificate file in .pem format (they don’t tell you that)
• The corresponding private key file in .pem format (they don’t tell you that)

This can be done using OpenSSL using the following commands.

Create your private key file:

openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 1024

 

Create the server CSR:

openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr

 

Create the Certificate from the CSR:

openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt

 

Convert the Certificate to DER

openssl x509 -in server.crt -out server.der -outform DER

 

Convert the Certificate to PEM

openssl x509 -in input.der -inform DER -out server.pem -outform PEM

 

Convert the Private Key to PEM:

openssl rsa -in server.key -out serverkey.pem

 

Then drop the server.pem and serverkey.pem files in the following folder on the vCenter server.

C:\Program Files\IBM\IBM Management Console for VMware vCenter\ssl

 

Then modify the following registry keys under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\IBMConsoleForvCenter\Parameters

• ssl_ca_certificate_file – Contains the relative path to the certificate file.
• ssl_private_key_file – Contains the relative path to the private key file.

From there, simply restart the IBM Management Console Service!

Tags: ca certificate, IBM Storage Management Console, pem files, relative path, ssl certificate, storage management, storage platform, StoreWize, V7000, vmware