While trying to export one of my VMs into OVF from my virtual infrastructure using the vSphere Web Client, I kept getting the following error:  “Could not connect to the remote resource: SSL connect error”. I have as well tested to import OVF templates into my VMware vSphere environment, and I was getting the same error, but this time I was getting one more additional error which states: “Unable to validate that the OVF can be imported on the vCenter Server”. The below screenshot demonstrate what the error look like in my environment.

I have tried to connect to the vSphere Web Client from a jump box within my lab environment and that seemed to work perfectly without a glitch, while my laptop machine kept to suffer from the same error. This lead me to compare my jump box with my own laptop config and the two obvious difference that I were able to identify is my laptop is not in the same domain as my jump box(which is joined to my lab domain), as well I am using a different DNS on my own laptop.

Changing the dns configuration on my laptop to match the machine in my lap seemed to get things working on my laptop as well (I did not need to join the domain). As the OVF Import/Export utilize its own tool which seems to call and be called upon by other components of vCenter using hostnames, correct DNS settings is critical for it’s operation.

Hope this help some of you save sometime when hitting this issue.