Registration of a IOFilter VASA Provider failed after upgrading to ESX 9.0

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

• IO Filter shows as offline for the hosts after upgrading to ESX 9.0 and following event is generated on vCenter :

  Event ID: "com.vmware.vc.sms.IoFilterVPRegisterFailure"
  Event message: "Registration of a IOFilter VASA Provider https://<esx.example.com:port>/iofiltervp/version.xml failed - Port 1443 might be disabled on corresponding ESXi host or at Firewall level. Please refer kb#375445 for more info."

• When installing or configuring third-party I/O filters (such as Zerto VAIO) on ESXi hosts, the I/O filter installs successfully, but the corresponding storage provider fails to register with vCenter Server. Consequently, storage policies associated with the I/O filter are not created.

Environment

• VMware vCenter Server 9.x
• VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x

Cause

TCP port 1443 is blocked on the network firewall or network security path between the vCenter Server and the ESXi hosts. vSphere relies on TCP port 1443 for communication with the IOFilter VASA Provider during provider registration and policy management

Resolution

1. Confirm the port is blocked from vCenter to ESX by running the following commands via SSH session on the vCenter Server using root:

   curl -v telnet://hostFQDN:1443

   openssl s_client -connect hostFQDN:1443

2. If the response is not 'established connection', open TCP Port 1443 for communication from the vCenter Server to the ESX 9.0 host in the external firewall.
3. Restart the sps service on the vCenter Server using the following command:

   service-control --restart sps

4. Redeploy or rescan the third-party VAIO solution (e.g., Zerto VRAs) to verify that the storage provider registers and storage policies are generated successfully.