This is a very straightforward and well-known method to replace esx certificates and if it works then well and good.

Establish an ssh session to the esx host and navigate to /etc/vmware/ssl directory

The two files we are interested are rui.crt and rui.key – The cert and key file

[root@sfo01-m01-esx02:~] ls -ltr /etc/vmware/ssl/rui*
-r——– 1 root root 1704 Apr 21 17:23 /etc/vmware/ssl/rui.key
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 1411 Apr 21 17:23 /etc/vmware/ssl/rui.crt
[root@sfo01-m01-esx02:~]

I’m just to back up the cert and key file just in case if it’s needed

[root@sfo01-m01-esx02:/etc/vmware/ssl] cp -a rui.* /cert-backup/
[root@sfo01-m01-esx02:/etc/vmware/ssl] ls -l /cert-backup/
total 8
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 1411 Apr 21 17:23 rui.crt
-r——– 1 root root 1704 Apr 21 17:23 rui.key

To regenerate new certificate on esx, just run the command as shown

/sbin/generate-certificates

Restart hostd and vpxa services by executing the following command:

/etc/init.d/hostd restart && /etc/init.d/vpxa restart 

Restart the host

reboot