The vSphere ESXi Core Dump Collector (vmware-netdumper) service starts, but does not listen on port 6500 in vCenter Server 7.0

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• After starting the vmware-netdumper service in vCenter Server 7.0, the service reports that it has successfully started, but connections to the vCenter Server on port 6500 fail
• No process shows as listening on port 6500 when running netstat -pano | grep 6500
• The following entries are seen in the /var/log/vmware/netdumper/netdumper.log:

YYYY-MM-DDT23:20:12.410Z| netdumper| I005: Configured to handle 1024 clients in parallel.
YYYY-MM-DDT23:20:12.410Z| netdumper| I005: Configuring /var/core/netdumps as the directory to store the cores
YYYY-MM-DDT23:20:12.410Z| netdumper| I005: Error setting the port to be used

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x

Cause

This issue has been observed on vCenter Server 7.0 systems that have been upgraded from a previous 7.0 build. The contents of the /etc/sysconfig/netdumper file will show:

NETDUMPER_DIR="/var/core/netdumps"
NETDUMPER_DIR_MAX_GB=4
NETDUMPER_DIR_THRESHOLD_GB=3
NETDUMPER_PORT=@@NETDUMP_SVCPORT_VALUE@@
NETDUMPER_WEBPORT=8000
NETDUMPER_HOST=@@NETDUMP_HOST_VALUE@@
NETDUMPER_LOG_FILE="/var/log/vmware/netdumper/netdumper.log"
NETDUMPER_WEBSERVER_LOG_FILE=/var/log/vmware/netdumper/webserver.log
NETDUMPER_OPTIONS="-d ${NETDUMPER_DIR} -o ${NETDUMPER_PORT} -l ${NETDUMPER_LOG_FILE}"

Resolution

In greenfield deployments of vCenter Server 7.0, the value for the variables NETDUMPER_PORT and NETDUMPER_HOST in /etc/sysconfig/netdumper are explicitly defined. Changing these variables back to using explicit values will allow the service to bind to the port (using vcsa70.demo.vmware.com as an example hostname):

NETDUMPER_DIR="/var/core/netdumps"
NETDUMPER_DIR_MAX_GB=4
NETDUMPER_DIR_THRESHOLD_GB=3
#NETDUMPER_PORT=@@NETDUMP_SVCPORT_VALUE@@
NETDUMPER_PORT=6500
NETDUMPER_WEBPORT=8000
#NETDUMPER_HOST=@@NETDUMP_HOST_VALUE@@
NETDUMPER_HOST=vcsa70.demo.vmware.com
NETDUMPER_LOG_FILE="/var/log/vmware/netdumper/netdumper.log"
NETDUMPER_WEBSERVER_LOG_FILE=/var/log/vmware/netdumper/webserver.log
NETDUMPER_OPTIONS="-d ${NETDUMPER_DIR} -o ${NETDUMPER_PORT} -l ${NETDUMPER_LOG_FILE}"