C# – Failure on HttpWebrequest with inner exception Authentication failed because the remote party has closed the transport stream

Using C#, .Net 4.5, I'm trying to send out a web request through HttpWebRequest on a remote server. Please see the code below.
I tried most of the solutions suggested by some forums but I always end up with the same error. Please see the stack trace below.
The error is thrown when calling the request.GetReponse() method.

Additional info, basically, I'm trying to call the reloadSslCertificate function of vmware's vCenter component installed on a remote server. Currently, the error only happens on vCenter 5.5. It works fine in versions 5.1 and below.

        var uri = String.Format("https://{0}/some_url", serverName);
        var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);
        request.KeepAlive = true;
        request.Accept = "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8";
        request.Headers.Set(HttpRequestHeader.AcceptLanguage, "en-US,en;q=0.8");
        request.Credentials = credential;
        request.CookieContainer = cookieContainer;


        var response = request.GetResponse();

Exception : System.Net.WebException: The underlying connection was
closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send. —>
System.IO.IOException: Authentication failed because the remote party
has closed the transport stream. at
System.Net.Security.SslState.StartReadFrame(Byte[] buffer, Int32
readBytes, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest) at
System.Net.Security.SslState.StartReceiveBlob(Byte[] buffer,
AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest) at
System.Net.Security.SslState.CheckCompletionBeforeNextReceive(ProtocolToken
message, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest) at
System.Net.Security.SslState.StartSendBlob(Byte[] incoming, Int32
count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest) at
System.Net.Security.SslState.ForceAuthentication(Boolean receiveFirst,
Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest) at
System.Net.Security.SslState.ProcessAuthentication(LazyAsyncResult
lazyResult) at System.Net.TlsStream.CallProcessAuthentication(Object
state) at
System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext
executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean
preserveSyncCtx) at
System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext
executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean
preserveSyncCtx) at
System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext
executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at
System.Net.TlsStream.ProcessAuthentication(LazyAsyncResult result) at
System.Net.TlsStream.Write(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size) at
System.Net.PooledStream.Write(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size)
at System.Net.ConnectStream.WriteHeaders(Boolean async) — End of
inner exception stack trace — at
System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()

Thanks in advance.