Network Port Requirements for VMware Bitfusion

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Bitfusion depends on various networking components to be working properly, including port availability and performance requirements. Issues can manifest as inability of Bitfusion clients and servers to connect, poor performance or high retransmission rates. To ensure that Bitfusion clients and servers are able to communicate reliably, ensure that the TCP network ports described in this KB are open and passing traffic.

Ports do need to be opened on firewalls if the user is trying to:

• Set up a Bitfusion client VM or bare metal host with an internal iptables firewall on the client VM.
• Set up a Bitfusion client pod on a Kubernetes cluster that uses a Container Network Interface (CNI) plugin that implements a firewall or other port-specific security policies.
• Set  up a Bitfusion client outside of the vSphere cluster and there’s an external firewall between that client and vSphere.

Environment

VMware vSphere Bitfusion 2.x

Resolution

The Bitfusion servers and processes listen on specific TCP ports for communication from Bitfusion clients. The following TCP ports must be open and unimpeded by firewalls or other security devices for Bitfusion to work properly:

• Ports 55001-55100 TCP, inbound to the Bitfusion servers from the Bitfusion clients
• Ports 56001-56100 TCP, inbound to the Bitfusion servers from the Bitfusion clients
• Ports 45201-46225 TCP, inbound to the Bitfusion servers from the Bitfusion clients
• Port 54000 TCP, inbound to the (main, first) Bitfusion server for vCenter Bitfusion plug-in access
• Port 443 TCP, outbound to the vCenter Server
• Ports 7000,7001,7199,9042 TCP, Inbound/Outbound between Bitfusion servers for Cassandra DB communication

Monitoring/Troubleshooting ports:

• Ports 161-162 - Monitoring plugin ports: 161 for SNMP requests, 162 for SNMP results/traps. Only needed if the user configures SNMP monitoring plugins on the Bitfusion server.
• Port 18515 – Used for running network performance testing tools (perftest) to verify the speed of network connections.

Additional Information

Please reference the VMware docs page for the version you are using for the most up to date port listing. For example, for version 4.0: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere-Bitfusion/4.0/Install-Guide/GUID-A379AA65-8FC9-4878-AEC7-287B6BD67279.html