NSX Expiring Transport Node Certificates

When 825 Days Just Aren’t Enough

What happens when your Transport Node certificates quietly expire and suddenly your hosts and edges vanish from NSX?

In his latest blog post, Daniel Krieger from evoila uncovers a subtle but significant issue affecting specific versions of VMware NSX (4.1.x and 4.2.0): Transport Node certificates issued in these versions come with a surprisingly short lifespan of just 825 days. Unlike newer versions (4.2.1 and above), these certificates are not renewed automatically during an upgrade, creating a silent ticking time bomb in your infrastructure.

The article explains what this issue means in practice, how to determine whether your environment is affected and how to take action before it’s too late. Using Broadcom’s CARR (Certificate Analyzer, Results and Recovery) script, the article walks through how to safely identify expiring certificates without the risk of unintentionally overwriting valid ones. For worst-case scenarios, such as already disconnected nodes, it provides detailed manual remediation steps and guidance on when to escalate the issue to Broadcom support.

This is not just a technical deep dive; it is also a practical guide tailored for administrators running VMware NSX in production environments – particularly those within VCF deployments. It combines recommended practices with real-world insights to provide a clear, practical approach to managing certificates throughout their lifecycle.

Whether managing a complex NSX deployment or simply looking to avoid common pitfalls in certificate handling, this article serves as a valuable resource for platform engineers, infrastructure architects, and anyone working with VMware networking.

The full article also includes detailed code snippets that bring the solution to life, helping you confidently tackle certificate expiration issues in your NSX environment.

👉 Read the full article here