Problem:
Our vCenter reports back that it "Cannot access the hardware monitoring service" when we click on the Hardware Status tab.
Setup:
-- two vsphere hosts running ESXi 5.1.
-- vCenter on a third machine running Windows 2008R2
-- All three machines are on the same network and subnet
Verified:
-- from vCenter, I verified that CIM Server service is running by checking Configuration (Tab) -> Security Profile -> Services
-- also from vCenter, I checked firewall setting by looking Configuration (Tab) -> Security Profile -> Firewall; according to the Firewall page, the CIM Server service runs on both TCP ports 5988 and 5989 -- but this may not mean anything because vCenter source port might be different from 5988 or 5989
Troubleshooting attempts:
-- restarted CIM Server service
Known issues:
-- checked and determined that for both ESXi hosts, port 5989 is open but 5988 is closed
-- ran wireshark packet capture on vCenter - I checked and determined that no TCP packets target port 5989 nor 5988 on the ESXi hosts from vCenter server
Question:
I would appreciate help on how to proceed forward.
1. I figure I want to open up port 5988 on the ESXi hosts - how can I do this?
2. Is there a CIM Client on vCenter that I need to check - to see if it is running?
Thanks,
Sean
Very old thread, but i am running into the same issue.
Running 6.5.0u2
Or monitoring software needs to connect to 5988 (removed ip-adresses from following).
Test-NetConnection 192.168.x.x -Port 5988
WARNING: TCP connect to (192.168.x.x : 5988) failed
Firewall is allowed, CIMServer is running, also tried to disable firewall.
SHH into the ESXI-host.
vi /etc/sfcb/sfcb.cfg
here you will see: httpLocalOnly is set to true, change it to false
/etc/init.d/sfcbd-watchdog restart
and the port should be open.
I found that this will not be able in future ESXI versions. https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/82638
