Connecting to WBEM services fails on ESXi 6.5

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
Third party products fail to query the ESXi host wbem services on port tcp/5989 or openwsman tcp/443.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5

Cause

In the ESXi 6.5, wbem services (sfcbd, openwsmand) are not started by default. This change improves resource utilization (cpu/memory) and security stance for operators that do not use the WBEM services and vSphere APIs are no longer dependent on this service to provide basic hardware health details.

Resolution

This is an expected behaviour.

To resolve this issue, enable the wbem services.

Note: To manage the WBEM services, a new set of esxcli commands are added .

For more information, see

• To enable and disable wbem services, see How to disable the CIM agent on the ESX/ESXi host (1025757).
• To enable and disable specific cim providers, see Disabling an ESXi CIM provider when it fails or is unstable (2053715)

Note: If a third party CIM provider is installed then sfcbd will autostart with the default configuration (WS-Man and CIM-XML) protocols enabled using http authentication -- user/password.

Additional Information

How to disable the CIM agent on the ESX/ESXi host
Disabling an ESXi CIM provider when it fails or is unstable