I then had to run the command esxcli network firewall refresh followed by esxcli network firewall ruleset list to verify a firewall rule named AllowVnc was set to true. I then created the file AllowVNC.xml (attached to this ticket) using vi with the following code that allows TCP connections to the host on port 5901: Then, I ran the command cd /etc/vmware/firewall. To do this, I first had to connect to the ESXi server (192.168.0.2) via SSH and login as user root. There's no way to allow VNC connections through the firewall in the vSphere Client, so I had to create a custom firewall rule. But the problem was that the firewall of the ESXi server was blocking inbound VNC connections. To connect to a VM using VNC, you have to connect to ipaddressofhost:vncport (port 1 is the same as 5901 in the VNC world, 2 is 5902, etc.). He following lines were added to the VMX file (using method 1 listed above) for the VM to allow VNC connections on port 5901 and require a VNC password. The VM must be connected to via the console because the USB HASP required to run the software will not allow it to run via remote desktop. The /etc/rc.local file is one of these select files, so adding the shell script to the end of the file can add the needed firewall entry each time the ESXi server boots.Here's an example of what I did to allow VNC connections to a VM running on our ESXi 5.1 host. Any changes made to this RAM disk are lost upon reboot.Ī workaround to this rule relies on the fact that the ESXi Server uses the auto-backup.sh script to persist a select set of files every 10 minutes (or when changes are made by with the VMware Client or the VI-SDK facilities) from this file system to the master persistent copy. Simply creating and editing this file does not work when the ESXi Server is rebooted because the root file system in ESXi 5 is a volatile RAM disk that is loaded from a master copy on each boot.

This process creates the /etc/vmware/firewall/vncServer.xml config file with the necessary settings to open the firewall ports. You should now see VNC Server as an available service in the Firewall Properties pane. While still logged in, run the following command:įrom either the ESXi host’s console or from the VMWare Client, reboot the ESXi host. Use spaces to indicate indents in the code, do not use tab characters.

IMPORTANT:Enter the code exactly as shown in the sample above.

Vmware vnc connection