ESXi Proxy Minion Issues (Ref Issue #44065)

I thought I had this fixed, with an older version of pyVmomi (7.0.3, had 9.0.0.0) but I lost my salt-master, had to reinstall it, and now I seem to be in a catch-22 situation:
I either get: salt.exceptions.InvalidConfigError: Additional properties are not allowed ('credstore' was unexpected)

Or if I pull the credstore out and run the proxy-minion again, I get:
salt.exceptions.VMwareConnectionError: Could not verify the SSL certificate. You can use verify_ssl: False if you do not want to verify the SSL certificate.

If I put the verify_ssl: False into pillar, then I get:
salt.exceptions.InvalidConfigError: Additional properties are not allowed ('verify_ssl' was unexpected)

Current salt-master has the following:

Script 'esxcli' version: 6.0.0
[root@localhost pillar]# salt-pip list | grep -E 'pyvmomi|json'
jsonschema                4.25.1
jsonschema-specifications 2025.9.1
pyvmomi                   7.0.3

Salt Version:
Salt: 3006.16

Python Version:
Python: 3.10.18 (main, Sep 5 2025, 22:48:51) [GCC 11.2.0]

I have looked at the proxy module for esxi.py and it documents “credstore”.
Pillar file versions have looked like this:

proxy:
  proxytype: esxi
  host: 192.168.0.4
  credstore: /root/.vmware/credstore/vicredentials.xml
  #verify_ssl: False
  username: root
  passwords:
    - "mySuperSecretPassword"

proxy:
  proxytype: esxi
  host: 192.168.0.4
  #credstore: /root/.vmware/credstore/vicredentials.xml
  verify_ssl: False
  username: root
  passwords:
    - "mySuperSecretPassword"

Have also removed username/passwords altogether and just referenced “credstore”.

Vicredentials.xml file looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<vicredentials>
  <credential>
    <host>ESXi-1.local</host>
    <user>root</user>
    <password>mySuperSecretPassword</password>
  </credential>
  <credential>
    <host>vcenter.local</host>
    <user>administrator@vsphere.local</user>
    <password>mySuperSecretPassword</password>
  </credential>
</vicredentials>

Have also tried it with IP addresses for the ESX and vCenter hosts/VMs.

Start with the esxi.py proxy module named in the report and reproduce the proxy-minion configuration using Salt 3006.16, Python 3.10.18, and pyVmomi 7.0.3. Compare the documented credstore and verify_ssl options with the validation errors; done means a supported configuration is accepted and the reported SSL or credential failure is resolved or clearly documented.