Viewing the console after putting a firewall in front of ESX

[chriskchung]

I had an ESX server that had a public IP address and was directly exposed to the internet. I wanted to improve the security, so I have put a sonicwall firewall in front and changed the ip address of the ESX server to an internal IP x.x.x.50 with a public IP of x.x.x.130. The sonic wall nats, and I am able to use the VIC to connect to the server. The problem, is that when I try to open the console for any server, I get a "cannot connect to x.x.x.50". For some reason, the VIC is using the IP address instead of the name.

Any suggestions?

[chriskchung]

And just in case it was not clear. I am able to use the VIC to connect. I see the inventory, and I can start the virtual servers up. The problem is when I try to connect to the console of the virtual server.

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

You should be able to fix this if you edit the file /etc/vmware/config and add this line:

vmauthd.server.alwaysProxy=TRUE

You may also need to run this after the change:

service mgmt-vmware restart

[jmcdonald1]

If you open up port 903 between your client workstation and the ESX server you should be able to connect up to the console, without any modifications to the ESX configuration files.