Introduction
In this blog we will show to fix the alarm “Registration of third-party IO filter storage providers fails” on ESXI hosts in VMware vCenter.
Issue
If we go to a cluster within VMware vCenter we will see the following alarm: “Registration/unregistration of third-party IO filter storage provider fails on a host.”.
When we go further in to the alarm we will need to go to “Monitor” and “Triggered Alarms”.
Understanding the Cause
This alarm is caused by the IO Filter on the ESXi host is not correctly registered with the ESXi host certificate.
To get a better understanding we can look in to the logs.
The logs can be found under /var/log/iofiltervpd.log or else /var/run/log/ in the log bundle.
We will look for something like:
iofiltervpd[67088]: run:159:SSL Connection error 30 : SSL_ERROR_SSL error:14094416:SSL routines:ssl3_read_bytes:sslv3 alert certificate unknown
Solution
To solve this issue we need to refresh the IO Filter Registration on the ESXi Host, but before we can do this let’s first verify if the Host Certificate and Certificate chain is OK on the ESXi Host.
Verify Certificates on ESXi Host
To verify if the Certificate and Certificate chain of the ESXi Host is OK we need to follow these steps:
1. Login to vCenter
2. Click on the ESXi host with the alarm
3. Click on “Configure”
4. Scroll down to under “System” you will find “Certificate”. Click on it.
5. Now you will see the “Status”. This should be “Good”
Enable SSH on ESXi Host (Optional)
1. Go to vCenter and login.
2. Choose the host and go to “Configure” -> “Services”. Find “SSH” and click on “START”
Refreshing the IO Filter Registration
After we have validated the Certificate and Certificate Chain on the ESXi Host we can proceed with refreshing the IO Filter Registration.
1. Open a SSH session to your ESXi Host.
2. Run the following command:
/usr/lib/vmware/iofilter/bin/iofvp-ctrl-app -r
3. After running the command the alarm should be resolved. If this is not the case you can click “Reset to Green”. The alarm should not return anymore.
