This page is for IT administrators and Operators who manage the
lifecycle of the underlying tech infrastructure. To learn more about common
roles and example tasks that we reference in Google Cloud content, see
Common GKE user roles and tasks.
In certain situations you must enter an IP address, and in other situations you
must enter a hostname. And in some cases, it doesn't matter. You can determine
the appropriate value by inspecting the serving certificate of your vCenter
server.
Download the serving certificate of your vCenter server, and save it to a file
named vcenter.pem:
Replace VCENTER_IP with the IP address of your
vCenter Server.
Open the certificate file to see the Subject Common Name and the Subject
Alternative Name:
openssl x509 -in vcenter.pem -text -noout
The output shows the Subject Common Name (CN). This might be an IP address, or
it might be a hostname. For example:
Subject: ... CN = 203.0.113.100
Subject: ... CN = my-host.my-domain.example
The output might also include one or more DNS names under
Subject Alternative Name:
X509v3 Subject Alternative Name:
DNS:vcenter.my-domain.example
Choose the Subject Common Name or one of the DNS names under
Subject Alternative Name to use as the value of the vCenter server address
in your configuration file. For example:
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-29 UTC."],[],[],null,["This document shows how to determine the value you should enter for\nyour vCenter server address in a Google Distributed Cloud\n[admin workstation configuration file](/kubernetes-engine/distributed-cloud/vmware/docs/how-to/admin-workstation-configuration-file)\nor an\n[admin cluster configuration file](/kubernetes-engine/distributed-cloud/vmware/docs/how-to/admin-cluster-configuration-file-latest).\nIn some cases, you might also want to to enter this value in a\n[user cluster configuration file](/kubernetes-engine/distributed-cloud/vmware/docs/how-to/user-cluster-configuration-file-latest).\n\nThis page is for IT administrators and Operators who manage the\nlifecycle of the underlying tech infrastructure. To learn more about common\nroles and example tasks that we reference in Google Cloud content, see\n[Common GKE user roles and tasks](/kubernetes-engine/enterprise/docs/concepts/roles-tasks).\n\nIn certain situations you must enter an IP address, and in other situations you\nmust enter a hostname. And in some cases, it doesn't matter. You can determine\nthe appropriate value by inspecting the serving certificate of your vCenter\nserver.\n\nDownload the serving certificate of your vCenter server, and save it to a file\nnamed `vcenter.pem`:\n\n```\ntrue | openssl s_client -connect VCENTER_IP:443 -showcerts 2\u003e/dev/null | sed -ne '/-BEGIN/,/-END/p' \u003e vcenter.pem\n```\n\nReplace \u003cvar translate=\"no\"\u003eVCENTER_IP\u003c/var\u003e with the IP address of your\nvCenter Server.\n\nOpen the certificate file to see the Subject Common Name and the Subject\nAlternative Name:\n\n```\nopenssl x509 -in vcenter.pem -text -noout\n```\n\nThe output shows the Subject Common Name (CN). This might be an IP address, or\nit might be a hostname. For example:\n\n```\nSubject: ... CN = 203.0.113.100\n```\n\n```\nSubject: ... CN = my-host.my-domain.example\n```\n\nThe output might also include one or more DNS names under\n`Subject Alternative Name`:\n\n```\nX509v3 Subject Alternative Name:\n DNS:vcenter.my-domain.example\n```\n\nChoose the Subject Common Name or one of the DNS names under\n`Subject Alternative Name` to use as the value of the vCenter server address\nin your configuration file. For example:\n\n```\nvCenter:\n credentials:\n address: \"203.0.113.1\"\n```\n\n```\nvCenter:\n credentials:\n address: \"my-host.my-domain.example\"\n```"]]
