VMware Horizon – Troubleshooting “vCenter connect error – Provisioning halted”

Release date: March 28th 2023

Welcome to my VMware Horizon series. I recently ran into a vCenter issue I though I might share, as this isn’t something I have see too many times before. The scenario was that the the vCenters self-signed certificate had expired and been renewed. This resulted in a Red exclamation mark in Horizon Administrator and the desktop provisioning had halted.

The reason for this, as it turned out, was that the thumbprint for the new self-signed vCenter certificate hadn’t been updated in the Horizon ADAM database.

To fix this issue I did the following:

• Connected to ADAM using ADSI Edit

• Browsed to the vCenter CN
  • DC=vdi,dc=vmware,dc=int
    • OU= Properties
      • OU= VitualCenter
        •             Right-click on vCenter CN and select Properties
• Cleared the value of pae-VCSslCertThumbprint attribute

• Next, I logged into Horizon Administrator and accepted the new vCenter self-signed certificate thumbprint.

• Finally, I re-enabled desktop pool provisioning

With this troubleshooting done, my desktop pools once again worked with provisioning as expected. Hopefully, this little session can be helpful to others out there who have the same problem.

Official VMware Documentation:

Connecting to the View ADAM LDAP Database (2012377)

VMware Horizon planning, deployment etc.

Disclaimer: Every tips/tricks/posting I have published here, is tried and tested in different it-solutions. It is not guaranteed to work everywhere, but is meant as a tip for other users out there. Remember, Google is your friend and don’t be afraid to steal with pride! Feel free to comment below as needed.