Quick Tip – Connect-OMServer throws The request was aborted: Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel.

While doing some work with PowerCLI and vRealize Operations Manager (vROps), I ran into the following error message when trying to connect to my vROps instance using PowerCLI:

Connect-OMServer : 2/17/2017 5:27:50 AM Connect-OMServer The request was aborted: Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel.
At line:1 char:1
+ Connect-OMServer -Server vrops.primp-industries.com -User admin -Password VMware ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (VMware.VimAutom...tionServiceImpl:OMConnectionServiceImpl) [Connect-OMServer], OMException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : OM_ConnectivityServiceImpl_ConnectOMServer_ByUserNameAndPassword_ConnectError,VMware.VimAutomation.vROps.Commands.Cmdlets.ConnectOMServer

Although there were some hits on Google, none of the suggestions has worked. I had also found that this issue was only happening in one of my lab environments which was running Windows 2008 R2, for my other system which had Windows 8.1, the issue was not observed.

I had reached out to the PowerCLI Engineering team and it looks like the issue is due to a change in the hashing algorithm (SHA512) that vROps uses for its SSL Certificates. When using TLS 1.2, SHA512 is not supported by default. The fix is to simply install the following patch here which will resolve the problem.