heartbeats & ESX 2.5.x / VC 2.0.2

[allencrawford]

Is there a way to have VirtualCenter ignore the heartbeats that occur over UDP 902 when you add an ESX 2.5.x host to VC 2.0.2? As far as I can tell, this UDP 902 heartbeat does not occur on ESX 2.5.x / VC 1.x combinations. I have a handful of ESX 2.5.x hosts that I need to remove from my VC 1.x server and add to my VC 2.0.2 server so that I can use Converter to migrate the VMs into my new ESX 3.0.x environment, but I never thought I'd need UDP 902 open from my ESX 2.5.x hosts through the firewall to my VC 2.0.2 server since it wasn't needed with VC 1.x. I didn't even realize the ESX 2.5.x hosts would start sending a heartbeat, but I guess the vpxa process gets that functionality once it is added to a VC 2.0.2 server...

Anyway, the point is, I'm trying to avoid all the red tape of getting our network team to open that port through the various firewalls (this is more than one subnet of hosts) when I only need it long enough to migrate the VMs off and then retire the old ESX 2.5.x hosts. Seems like a waste of time to send the heartbeats anyway since you get no HA features on ESX 2.5.x.

Thanks in advance.

[admin · Accepted solution]

Nope, the UDP heartbeats are needed so that the VC server knows that the vpxa agent on the host is alive and to get notifications when things change on the host. If the heartbeats don't get through the host will be marked as "no responding" on the VC server

Elisha

[allencrawford]

Right, but since this isn't required in VirtualCenter 1.x for ESX 2.5.x hosts I was hoping VC 2.0.2 could be set up to ignore the heartbeats and just assume that the host is up (much like it apparently works in VC 1.x). But I kind of assumed there's no way around it though and have already opened my change order to get UDP 902 opened up. Was hoping to avoid all that since these servers are all being retired in a couple of months is all goes well. Oh well, thanks for the response.