Some common firewall rule configurations include opening access to the vSphere Client from the internet, allowing access to vCenter through the management VPN tunnel, and allowing remote console access.
Commonly Used Firewall Rules
The following table shows the Service, Source, and Destination settings for commonly-used firewall rules.
Use Cases | Service | Source | Destination |
---|---|---|---|
Provide access to vCenter from the internet. Use for general vSphere Client access as well as for monitoring vCenter |
HTTPS | IP address or CIDR block from on-premises data center
Important:
Although you can select Any as the source address in a firewall rule, you cannot use Any or the wildcard 0.0.0.0/0 as the source address when the destination is vCenter. Doing so can enable attacks on your vCenter and may lead to compromise of your SDDC. Beginning with SDDC version 1.22, we prevent you from publishing a management gateway firewall rule with a source address of Any or 0.0.0.0/0 and destinations that include vCenter. |
vCenter |
Provide access to vCenter over VPN tunnel. Required for Management Gateway VPN, Hybrid Linked Mode, and Content Library. |
HTTPS | IP address or CIDR block from on-premises data center | vCenter |
Provide access from cloud vCenter to on-premises services such as Active Directory, Platform Services Controller, and Content Library. | Any | vCenter | IP address or CIDR block from on-premises data center. |
Provisioning operations involving network file copy traffic, such as cold migration, cloning from on-premises VMs, snapshot migration, replication, and so on. | Provisioning | IP address or CIDR block, either public or from an on-premises data center connected by a VPN tunnel | ESXi Management |
VMRC remote console access Required for VMware Aria Automation |
Remote Console | IP address or CIDR block, either public or from an on-premises data center connected by a VPN tunnel | ESXi Management |
vMotion traffic over VPN | Any | ESXi Management | IP address or CIDR block from on-premises data center |