HCX Site Pairing failed with Error “Untrusted SSL Connection”

In the last post of the HCX series, I demonstrated deploying and configuring the HCX Cloud appliance. The next step is to pair the HCX Enterprise appliance with the HCX Cloud appliance to start consuming HCX features.

When I tried pairing the HCX on-prem appliance with the HCX Cloud appliance, I got an SSL connection error, and the site pairing task failed.

I quickly checked on this error with one of our developers from the hybridity team, and he helped me with the actual steps for fixing this issue. These are the high-level steps you need to perform when you face this issue.

1: Generate private and public cert files on the HCX Cloud appliance.

[root@hcx-cloud ~]# openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 1000 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout private.crt -out public.crt -subj '/C=IN/ST=Karnataka/L=Bangalore/O=vstellar.com/OU=hybridity/CN=192.168.109.29'
Generating a 2048 bit RSA private key
...+++
..........................................................................+++
writing new private key to 'private.crt'
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[root@hcx-cloud ~]# openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 1000 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout private.crt -out public.crt -subj '/C=IN/ST=Karnataka/L=Bangalore/O=vstellar.com/OU=hybridity/CN=192.168.109.29'

Generating a 2048 bit RSA private key

...+++

..........................................................................+++

writing new private key to 'private.crt'

-----

Note: 192.168.109.29 is the IP address of my HCX-Cloud appliance.

The above command generated the private.crt and public.crt files on the HCX Cloud appliance.

[root@hcx-cloud ~]# ls

private.crt public.crt

[root@hcx-cloud ~]# ls

private.crt public.crt

2: Import the generated certs in the HCX Cloud appliance

Login to HCX Cloud Appliance Management UI (https://hcx-cloud-ip:9443)
Navigate to the Administration > Server Certificate tab.
Paste the contents of public.crt in the ‘Server Certificate’ section.
Paste the contents of private.crt in the ‘Private Key’ section.

Make sure the certificate is imported successfully.

3: Import the certificate from HCX Cloud to the HCX Enterprise appliance

Login to HCX Enterprise Appliance Management UI (https://hcx-enterprise-ip:9443)
Navigate to Administration > Trusted CA Certificate tab and click on ‘Import.’