Powerchute network shutdown and vSphere vMa

[Anonymous user]

We have a APC SmartUPS 5000XL with a network management card that we are trying to connect to our vSphere environment with 2 ESXi 4.0 servers. Our goal is to have our vmware guest VM's shutdown when the APC sends out the shutdown signal and then have the vmware hosts shutdown. I have installed vmware's virtual management assistant(vMa) to connect to and control the ESXi servers. We also purchased the APC vmware agent and install it following the instructions that came with the agent. The ip address for vMa has been manually added to the Management Card. Now I am getting a message in the APC eventlog on vMa that "Powerchute cannot communicate with the management card. Is the vmware agent not supported with the newest version of vmware?

[Anonymous user]

I got it working. The APC installation instructions do not include the commands to open the firewall.

esxcfg-firewall -o 80,tcp,out,”APC PowerChute Port 80?
esxcfg-firewall -o 3052,tcp,out,”APC PowerChute Port 3052?
esxcfg-firewall -o 3052,tcp,in,”APC PowerChute Port 3052?
esxcfg-firewall -o 3052,udp,out,”APC PowerChute Port 3052?
esxcfg-firewall -o 3052,udp,in,”APC PowerChute Port 3052?
esxcfg-firewall -o 6547,tcp,out,”APC PowerChute Port 6547?
esxcfg-firewall -o 6547,tcp,in,”APC PowerChute Port 6547?

[BillP · Accepted solution]

you want to make sure the following ports are open to maintain communication between the NMC and the VMWare PCNS client:

NMC ->PCNS for shutdown command, any other communication: TCP 3052
NMC and PCNS maintaining communication: UDP 3052
PCNS->NMC: TCP/UDP 80 (or whatever port the HTTP (not HTTPS) port is set to on the NMC)

are you getting this message when trying to install PCNS after running the install script or when you access the PCNS event log via the PCNS web interface?