vCloud Director Extender – Network Ports

One of the things which appears to be missing from the published documentation on vCloud Director Extender (CX) is any mention of the communications internally between the deployed appliances and other VMware infrastructure components (vCenter, vCloud Director etc.) In a service provider context it is unlikely that the appliances will be deployed into the same network/security zone as these components so it is important to know what these communication requirements are.

Using the Flow Monitoring functionality in VMware NSX I was able to capture all traffic flows during vCloud Extender migrations and produce the drawing below detailing these traffic flows.

Network Traffic Flows for vCloud Extender (Provider Side)

 

Note that the http (tcp/80) access from the replicator appliance to the ESXi hosts appears anomolous – I would have expected this to be on https (tcp/443) at the very least and this probably needs further investigation.

The 8044/tcp port to the replication manager can be NAT’d from a different external (public) port if necessary – this can be configured using the ”Public Endpoint URL” field when activating the replication manager appliance during vCloud Extender deployment (see my post: http://152.67.105.113/2017/10/vcloud-director-extender-part-2-cloud-provider-setup/).

The 44045/tcp port to the replicator appliance can also be NAT’d from a different external (public) port if necessary – this can be configured using the “Public Endpoint URL” field when activating the replicator appliance during vCloud Extender deployment  (see my post: http://152.67.105.113/2017/10/vcloud-director-extender-part-2-cloud-provider-setup/).

Be careful when activating the “Replication Manager” and “Replicator” appliances – the configuration screens look very similar and it is reasonably easy to get them mixed up and enter incorrect parameters.

Also note that this diagram only depicts traffic flows for migration activity and doesn’t capture additional flows involved in L2 network extensions (which typically will be from a hosted NSX edge to either the tenant NSX edge or standalone NSX appliance in the tenant site).

At least the information presented should allow other service providers to configure appropriate network security to protect their internal vCloud and vSphere environments when deploying vCloud Extender components into a DMZ network (for example).

As always, comments and feedback appreciated.

Jon

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3 Responses to vCloud Director Extender – Network Ports

  1. Andrey says:

    Hi Jon!

    I’ve found some other firewall/nat ports in ‘vCD Extender Users Guide 1.1:

    You configure an NAT rule, to allow traffic from the public IP address of the
    vCloud Director Extender Cloud Appliance
    SP-Public-IP-1
    :
    443
    to the private address of the
    vCloud Director Extender Cloud Appliance
    vCD-Extender-Cloud-Appliance-IP
    :
    443
    .
    n
    You configure an NAT rule, to allow traffic from the public IP address of the Replication Manager
    SP-
    Public-IP-2
    :
    443
    to the private IP address of the Replication Manager
    Replication-Manager-IP
    :
    443
    n
    You configure an NAT rule, to allow traffic from the public IP address of the Replicator
    SP-Public-
    IP-2
    :
    44045
    to the private IP address of the Replicator
    Replicator-IP
    :
    44045
    .

  2. 192.168.l.l says:

    Such a great explanation about Network Traffic Flows. I enjoy reading your post. keep posting such posts always.

  3. An outstanding share! I’ve just forwarded
    this onto a co-worker who wass doing a little research
    onn this. And hhe actually bought me lunch due to the
    fact that I found it for him… lol. So let me reword this….
    Thank YOU for the meal!! But yeah, thanx for spending the time
    to talk about this subject here on you blog.

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