Bind VCenter 4 to specific IP

[uno83]

Hi.

We are running VCenter 4 Update 1 on a physical server. Now I would like to install another service on that server, that also uses port 80 and 443. I was planning to add another IP to the server, and bind the services to one IP each. But I cannot find any way to bind VCenter to only one IP, is that possible? Maybe it can be done in Tomcat? When I look in the Tomcat config, it seems like it uses high ports, is there some kind of proxy that runs on 80 and 443 and forwards the traffic to Tomcat? I would prefer not to change to non-standard ports.

[RParker]

Does that other service let you use IIS? If so just change that service port to different ones that are not in use on IIS. I know how to change IIS, but the apache that's installed with vCenter is not a full apache server (I don't think), so you may not be able to configure it for other services.

[uno83]

Yes, the other service (WSUS) uses IIS. But I would like to run both services on standard ports, but different IP:s, if possible. Sorry about the confusing subject (i mistakenly wrote port instead of IP). I know I can change the VCenter ports in the configuration, but I think it should be possible to limit it to just one specific IP.

[Censored]

I'm looking for the same. Have you found a way to accomplish this yet? I also want (read: need) to use 80/443 for the other service.

Thanks

[uno83]

I did not find any way to bind vCenter to a specific IP, so I ended up moving it to port 81/444 instead. If you just want to change the ports for vCenter you can do that in the vCenter server settings using vSphere Client.

[Censored]

Thanks for the update. I used that solution too in the past, it's just that when you run update manager too, vsphere client also connects to :443 of the update manager server. It works however, but it's just annoying and not "clean" Just a bug though, indicating it is -really- supposed to run on 443; that's why I looked for the binding again.

Sad that vmware didn't implement such a logical option. Especially when you can set a "management ip" in the settings.

[stoz]

that's not the smartest thing in the world. Installing wsus on the vcenter.

[uno83]

Why not? What would be the problem, apart from the IP/port bindings? None of them uses a lot of resources, and it seems like a waste to use a separate server for each.

[RParker]

Why not? What would be the problem, apart from the IP/port bindings

Well for one thing, it's a vCenter. do you really want to risk that some other program can interfere with your vCenter? I don't think so. And for another its in the manual recommendations, NOT to run anything on vCenter server, it needs to be by itself, same goes for DB instances and ESX hosts. They are specific programs for a special purpose, and you don't want to have something else that could potentially cause a problem.

If you call VM Ware and they see that you have other services running other than VM Ware, they will not support you.

[Censored]

Don't know if you are speaking from experience, but I'd doubt that. Not everyone is running vCenter with 500 servers. If that's the case, no doubt I would let it reside on a seperate server. However if you're a company with say 3 esx servers, I don't think it would be a smart move of VMware to make their customers run a vcenter on a completely seperate installation; wheter it's a vm or not (if running in a vm you need to shutdown vcenter to update for instance your esx install). Yet another server could really be a waste of money for SMBs. But as I said, I don't know if running a vcenter together with other services is unsupported.

Apart from that, whether it's supported or not, it's a waste of resources for small companies, even if running as a VM (it's about ~768ram thrown away for a 2008 to let it run smoothly on a bare install).

@uno83: why are you so desperatly trying to run WSUS on port 80/443? WSUS runs better on other ports than vCenter

[uno83]

Well WSUS swlf-update does not work on any other port than port 80, but I might not need that. However, vCenter seems to work really good on the standard port.

I would never want to run vCenter in a VM, it doesn't seem like a smart thing to run the tool you need to manage your virtualization platform on a virtual machine. If something happens with the ESX environment, I sure want to be able to access vCenter. I can't really see the problem with running a Windows component (WSUS) on the same host as vCenter, apart from the bindings conflict. It's not like WSUS is going to change stuff in the vCenter database or something.

[Censored]

Aw yes that's true, I also had problems with that. Not sure, but I thought that it just picks up the other port from the GP/register settings. At least for clients, think I remember that the checkhealth gave problems though. However I didn't look into it any further as it the production server had IIS running on 80 vCenter indeed works fine on other ports, just that one bug in Update Manager that I didn't like. But everything did work fine indeed.

Anyways, I still want the bind to IP feature