vD vDan VMware · VCF · NSX · K8S

VMware Ports and Protocols

Short answer: VMware ports and protocols for VCF 9.0 and 9.1 on one page, drawn as a graph instead of a long table. The data is every port that Broadcom publishes for the products of VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 and 9.1. That covers ESX, vCenter, NSX, vSAN, SDDC Manager, VCF Operations and its collectors, Fleet Manager, Logs, Networks, Identity Broker, VCF Automation, HCX, vDefend, Avi, DSM and Protection and Recovery. The components are nodes. Every source-destination pair is one edge. The thicker the edge, the more ports it carries. Click a node to see what talks to it. Click an edge for the ports of that pair. Type a port number such as 902 to light up every edge that carries it. The Ports tab shows the same connections in tiers, with the number of ports on each edge. The Latency view rebuilds the VCF Fleet Latency diagram as data: the maximum round-trip latency and the minimum bandwidth per pair, each with its source. Table sorts and exports every row. Compare shows what 9.1 added, removed or reworded against 9.0. Learn turns the data into flashcards and a quiz. Everything is built from the public data behind ports.broadcom.com. The Broadcom site remains the authority.

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How to use the VMware ports and protocols graph

  • Graph. Pick the release, VCF 9.0 or 9.1, and if you like one component. Blue nodes are the core products: ESX, vCenter, NSX, vSAN and the Supervisor. Purple nodes are the management plane: SDDC Manager, VCF Operations, Fleet Manager, Logs, Networks, Identity Broker, Management Services and HCX. Green is consumption: VCF Automation and Private AI. Amber marks the services: vDefend, Avi, DSM, Protection and Recovery. Grey marks the external services and clients: DNS, NTP, Active Directory, syslog, storage, backup and the Broadcom online services. A click on a node lists its peers with the number of ports. A click on an edge lists every port of that pair with protocol, direction and purpose. A click on a port row opens the details and the link to the Broadcom page it came from.
  • Ports. The same connections in the layered layout of the Latency view. The fleet and management plane sit on top, then the core of a VCF instance, the services and the external endpoints. The label on an edge is the number of distinct ports between the two components. The thickness follows the number of rows. With all components selected the labels appear on hover, on search and on selection. Pick a component for a readable picture. The details open below the graph.
  • Search. A port number lights up every edge that carries it. Ranges count, so 10002 finds 10002-10010. A word searches the purposes, descriptions and endpoint names. The protocol and direction filters narrow the graph, the table, the comparison and the quiz deck. On phones the graph becomes a list of components and peers.
  • Latency. The VCF Fleet Latency diagrams of VCF 9.0, 9.1 and 9.1.1 as a redrawn graph. Fleet-level VCF Operations and VCF Automation are on top, the management domain of a VCF instance in the middle, workload domains and remote sites below. Green edges are 50 ms, teal 100 ms, amber 150 ms and purple 300 ms of maximum round trip. Dashed edges carry the minimum bandwidth. Dotted edges are the requirements printed in the notes box: long-distance vMotion, linked vCenters, Supervisor. A click shows the exact requirement, the note and where the figure comes from. The table below the graph lists every requirement, and Markdown exports it.
  • Table. Every row of the chosen release, sortable by any column. CSV and Markdown export the filtered rows. Copy link reproduces the view, for example ?view=table&component=sddc&q=443.
  • Compare 9.0 vs 9.1. Per component: rows added in 9.1, rows removed, and rows that 9.1 only reworded. Reworded means the same port, protocol and endpoints under new names. Products that appear only under 9.1 are marked. Broadcom rewrote the endpoint names of SDDC Manager, VCF Operations for Networks and others for 9.1. That is why the reworded group exists.
  • Learn. A quiz with four choices, a score and the keys 1 to 4, or flashcards. The deck is built from the rows that match the current filters plus the latency requirements of the release. Typical cards: “Which port does vCenter use towards ESX for …?” and “What is the maximum latency between SDDC Manager and a workload domain vCenter?”. The cards you missed can be exported as Markdown and retried.

Where the VMware ports and protocols data comes from

The port rows are the published listings of every product that ports.broadcom.com lists under VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 and 9.1. They are fetched from the public API behind the site and de-duplicated across the two releases. Every row links back to its product page there. The latency and bandwidth figures were transcribed from the three VCF Fleet Latency diagrams. Broadcom publishes those as images only. The tool draws its own graph from that data and names the diagram each figure comes from. The data date is in the footer of the tool.

Frequently asked questions about VMware ports and protocols

Which ports does ESX need towards vCenter?

ESX talks to vCenter on TCP 443 for management and on TCP and UDP 902 for heartbeats. ESX also reaches vCenter on 6500 for the dump collector, on 6501 for Auto Deploy and on 9084 and 9087 for the Lifecycle Manager repository. vCenter in turn reaches ESX on 443 and on 8083 for the Lifecycle Manager settings. Open the vCenter and ESX pair in the Graph to see all of them with their purposes.

Which ports do ESX hosts use between each other?

vMotion uses TCP 8000. vSphere HA uses 8182 on TCP and UDP. Fault Tolerance uses 8100, 8200 and 8300. The NFC traffic of the Content Library and of cross-vCenter vMotion uses TCP 902. The distributed switch health check uses UDP 8301 and 8302. Select ESX in the Ports tab to see the full list.

What are the VCF latency limits between the components?

The VCF Fleet Latency diagram allows up to 300 ms round trip between the fleet-level VCF Operations or VCF Automation and the components of a VCF instance. The VCF Operations Collector needs 50 ms or less to vCenter, SDDC Manager and NSX Manager. SDDC Manager to a workload domain vCenter is 100 ms. NSX Manager to its Edge nodes and to the ESX transport nodes is 150 ms. The Latency view lists every pair with the diagram it comes from.

What changed between VCF 9.0 and 9.1?

The 9.1 lists on ports.broadcom.com add 729 rows and drop 230 against 9.0. Another 137 rows keep the port, protocol and endpoints but were reworded. Ten products are listed only under 9.1, among them VCF Management Services, HCX, vDefend, Avi and DSM. The Compare view shows the changes per component. The numbers follow the data date in the footer of the tool.

Is this the official VMware ports list?

No. The official list is the Broadcom site ports.broadcom.com. This tool reads the public data behind that site and redraws it. Every row links back to its Broadcom product page. The latency figures were transcribed from the Broadcom diagrams, which exist only as images. When the two differ, the Broadcom site wins.

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