Understanding the esxgdpd Process in VMware ESXi

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

The objective of this article is to provide understanding on the esxgdpd (ESXi Guest Data Publisher Daemon) process in VMware ESXi

Environment

vSphere 8.x

Resolution

Esxgdpd is component for communication between the ESXi and the virtual machine's guest operating system. This service is primarily used to publish and collect specific guest-level metrics and data that the hypervisor needs to manage the VM's performance and health.

By default, the esxgdpd process listens on TCP port 9999 via the loopback interface. This localized communication ensures that data exchange remains secure and confined to the host environment.

# esxcli network ip connection list | grep esxgdpd

Proto  Recv Q  Send Q  Local Address      Foreign Address       State         World ID   CC Algo  World Name
tcp         0       0  [::1]:9999         [::]:0                LISTEN         262**9   newreno  esxgdpd
tcp         0       0  127.0.0.1:9999     0.0.0.0:0    LISTEN         262839   newreno  esxgdpd