I've been looking through VMware documentation, KB articles, and openSSL websites to find a good reference for generating certificates requests for an ESXi 4.1 host so that I can get a CA-signed certificate. I have not been able to findclear instructions. The ESXi Configuration Guide for ESXi 4.1/vCenter Server 4.1 doesn't have instructions for using the openssl command. KB1029944 has decent instructions but for vCenter server and some options seem to not match up or are missing (doesn't show how to generate a 2048 bit key.
What I ended up doing was executing the command 'openssl genrsa 2048 > rui.key' which created the rui.key file; I believe this is the private key. I then went on to execute the next command (I believe is the certificate request) 'openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -newkey rsa:2048 -key rui.key -out rui.csr'. This command returned an error "unable to load config from /etc/pki/tls/openssl.cnf", a file which is non-existent.
Am I going about this the right way? Am I supposed to build this configuration file? I was about to find out how to do so but wanted to make sure it is the right way to go in creating a certificate request in order to get a CA-signed certificate.