When attempting to sync a new external catalog from vCenter to Cloud Director receiving connect timed out error

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

Attempting to use the Content Hub > Catalogs > NEW > Create Catalog Wizard results in an error message similar to:

[ ########-####-####-####-############ ] Connect to <esxihost>.example.com:443 [<esxihost>.example.com/###.###.###.###] failed: connect timed out

com.vmware.ssdc.util.LMException: Connect to <esxihost>.example.com:443 [<esxihost>.example.com/###.###.###.###] failed: connect timed out
...
Caused by: org.apache.http.conn.ConnectTimeoutException: Connect to <esxihost>.example.com/###.###.###.###:443 [<esxihost>.example.com/###.###.###.###] failed: connect timed out
...
Caused by: java.net.SocketTimeoutException: connect timed out
...
 ... 20 more

Environment

Cloud Director 10.6.1
vCenter Server 8.0.3 U3g
ESXi 8.0.3 U3g

Cause

This is caused by port 443 not passing traffic on the network between the source ESXi hosts in the vSphere cluster which hosts the external catalog.

Resolution

Work with the firewall team to ensure port 443 is open from the Cloud Director cells to the vSphere cluster hosts.