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Changing the default HTTP(s) Reverse Proxy Ports on ESXi 8.0

03.22.2023 by William Lam // 7 Comments

The process of changing the default ports for the ESXi Reverse Proxy service has always been pretty straight forward, which I had also shared back in 2015 HERE. While most customers stick with the default configuration (80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS), we do have some customers that need to change these ports to meet certain organization security and/or compliance requirements.

Disclaimer: VMware does not officially support modifying the default HTTP/HTTPS ports on an ESXi host.

I recently came across a customer report where the previous method for changing the ESXi Reverse Proxy ports on an 8.0 host no longer worked and the only thing that was shared was that the user could no longer run ESXCLI directly within the ESXi Shell, which I thought was a strange observation.

I deployed the latest ESXi 8.0b as a Nested ESXi VM and I went through the instructions I had outlined in my blog post HERE and changed the HTTPS port from 443 to 4444, which was the setup the user was looking to do and I ran into the exact same issue. At first, I thought maybe we actually no longer support this capability and decided to quickly test by using the remote version of ESXCLI, which allows you to specify a port as part of the connection and it failed with the same error.

UPDATE (07/31/23) - For ESXi 8.0 Update 1 instructions, please refer to this blog post HERE.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, ESXi, vSphere 8.0 Tags // ESXi 8.0, reverse proxy

Quick Tip - Changing default port for HTTP Reverse Proxy on both vCenter Server & ESXi

10.27.2015 by William Lam // 11 Comments

If you decide to use a custom port for the HTTP Reverse Proxy (rhttpproxy) on vCenter Server which uses port 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS) by default, you should also apply the same change on all ESXi hosts being managed by that vCenter Server for proper functionality. The configuration files for the rhttpproxy has since changed from the early days of vSphere 5.x and in vSphere 6.x, there are now different.

UPDATE (04/27/18) - With release of vSphere 6.7, VMware now officially supports customizing the Reverse HTTP(s) Ports on the VCSA. Below is a screenshot using the VCSA Installer UI and this can also be customized in the JSON configuration file using the VCSA CLI Installer for automation purposes.

Below are the instructions for modifying the default ports for rhttproxy service for both Windows vCenter Server, vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) and ESXi host.

Note: If you change the default ports of your vCenter Server, you will need to ensure that all VMware/3rd Party products that communicate with vCenter Server are also modified.

vCenter Server for Windows

On Windows, you will need to modify C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\cfg\vmware-rhttpproxy\config.xml and look for the following lines to change either the HTTP and/or HTTPs ports:

<httpPort>80</httpPort>
<httpsPort>443</httpsPort>

Once you have saved the changes, you will need to restart the VMware HTTP Reverse Proxy service using Windows Services Manager.

vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)

On the VCSA, you will need to modify /etc/vmware-rhttpproxy/config.xml and look for the following lines to change either the HTTP and/or HTTPs ports:

<httpPort>80</httpPort>
<httpsPort>443</httpsPort>

Once you have saved the changes, you will need to restart the rhttpproxy service by running the following command:

/etc/init.d/rhttpproxy restart

ESXi

Disclaimer: VMware does not officially support modifying the default HTTP/HTTPS ports on an ESXi host.

Pre-ESXi 8.0 - Use the following instructions:

On ESXi, you will need to modify /etc/vmware/rhttpproxy/config.xml and look for the following lines to change either the HTTP and/or HTTPs ports:

<httpPort>80</httpPort>
<httpsPort>443</httpsPort>

Once you have saved the changes, you will need to restart the rhttpproxy service by running the following command:

/etc/init.d/rhttpproxy restart

  • For ESXi 8.0 - Please see Changing the default HTTP(s) Reverse Proxy Ports on ESXi 8.0 for updated instructions
  • For ESXi 8.0 Update 1 and later - Please see Changing the default HTTP(s) Reverse Proxy Ports on ESXi 8.0 Update 1 for updated instructions

Categories // ESXi, VCSA, vSphere, vSphere 6.0 Tags // ESXi, reverse proxy, rhttpproxy, vCenter Server, vcenter server appliance, VCSA, vcva

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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