ESXi hosts in non responding state

[JohnyBeGod]

Hello,

I'm testing 2 remote ESXi (OVH network) with vCenter Server behind pfSense router at home. I'm getting errors below and from my research it has to do with ports being closed.

So I opened UDP 902 (The default port that the vCenter Server system uses to send data to managed hosts.) but it did not help. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

[ThompsG]

Hi there,

902 requires both UDP and TCP - heartbeats are over UDP but TCP is required as well.

There are also other ports required for thing like console access, etc but assuming this is not your major concern for the moment. Reference: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2106283

Kind regards.

[JohnyBeGod]

Howdy and thanks for the reply!

Somehow I saw somewhere it needed only UDP but now I've changed to 902 TCP/UDP and also opened TCP 443.

I had to reboot vCenter Server and now it shows that its connected (fingers crossed). Those should be only ports need to keep ESXi's connected to vCenter?

[ThompsG]

Hi there,

For straight out vCenter connectivity - that is correct. There are other vCenter services that you may require, i.e. console access to VMs, CIM, Syslog, etc. but 902 and 443 are the major ones for connectivity.

There is an excellent network port diagram attached to this KB article: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2131180

This has all the ports and their requirements between each of the components.

Kind regards.

[JohnyBeGod]

Thanks for sharing that link!

In the mean time I was doing "Clone > Clone to Virtual Machine" option and I experienced another server is not responding. Reboot of vCenter fixed it. It could be that Clone process is putting too much stress on the server.

Looking the diagram I'm confused with how on arrow starts at ESXi as 902/TCP,UDP and then it changes to 5988/TCP on vCenter. Same goes for arrow that starts on vCenter 8000/TCP then it changes to 902?TCP,UDP and at the end to 80/TCP.

What specific ports do I need open on vCenter? To my knowledge all ports are open on the remote ESXi.