Is it safe to let ESX respond to test tcp and udp ports?

[rightfoot]

I have a need to set up a server which responds simply to http requests for a 200 along with ICMP and a few udp ports.

It seems overkill to set up a whole OS simply to get this behavior and wondered if ESX could respond.

I was wondering if it's safe, reasonable to allow port 80 to respond to http connections. All I need is a 200 response for testing some software along with some udp ports.

There is no need for a web page, just a way to get a 200 response, nothing else.

Yes, I do know that udp ports don't respond but I can't get into what the testing is since I'm not sure. I was simply asked if this is possible so am asking.

Thanks.

[Dee006]

Hi,

All you need to set the virtual firewall like mention below

VM->vFirewall->LAN.

[rightfoot]

Yes, I know I can set the firewall to respond as needed but my point is, is it safe?
In fact, there are hundreds to thousands of these connections coming in so I also need something minimal that would have very good performance for handling such large numbers. I wondered if an ESX host, doing mainly only this would be more efficient than a server.

[Dee006]

Hi Right,

Yes,most of the virtual firewall can handle you traffic based on the size of the appliance you set.VMware has its own platform NSX which suitable for larger datacenter solution.I prefer you to go hol vmware labs to access the LAB and see before you are evaluating in your environment.There are other third party vendor also providing similar vFirewall appliance.

You can control your inside - outside(N-S) traffic of DC and within(E-W) traffic the datacenter traffic.