Cannot ping VCenter Server and Security issues

[Ccoro]

Hi, I am testing a lab (Windows) in which I do push installation of an antivirus which requires communication between server and remote machines.

As part of the pre-requisites a ping from server to remote machines is nessesary but I cant seem to ping VCenter Server.

I have no problems logging in VCenter with an administrator account in the domain, everything is working fine, but I dont know why I cant ping VCenter from any other machine (including Domain Controller) however I can do it from VCenter to any other machine.

DC1.something.com (domain controller)

VCenter.something.com (VCenter server which has been installed with simple install v5.1 Update 1)

DataBase1.something.com (server in which I run the antivirus remote administration server) - I cannot ping VCenter from here.

I have read other forums in which enabling file sharing resolve this issue, and it DOES, but what I want to know is:

Why Vcenter after installation blocks these ports? Am I going to be ok if I enable File Sharing? Which is the secure way to acomplish this?.

Thanks in advance.

[marcelo_soares]

vCenter installation does not block ICMP (ping). Whis is a Windows Firewall configuration. There is no reason why vCenter would block this kind of communication.

[a_nut_in]

On the VCenter machine, open an elevated command prompt and type in "netsh advfirewall set allp state off" without the quotes and hit enter

This will disable the Windows Firewall and should allow you to ping, If you have any other firewalls apart from Windows firewall, you might have to disable that as well. For disabling any third party firewalls, check your vendor documentation for the firewall application

[Ccoro]

Before installing VCenter with simple install which installs Simple Sign On and Vcenter, I could ping VCenter, but after I did it I cannot, Anyways, disabling windows firewall does in fact the job but I dont want to do this for security reasons. I know that enabling File and printer sharing resolves the problem but I would like to know which ports is Vcenter blocking, because it is in fact blocking them. You could reproduce this in a lab environment after a fresh install of Windows Server 2012

[a_nut_in]

ICMP has been blocked by default on Windows Server editions since 2008

http://blog.blksthl.com/2012/11/20/how-to-enable-ping-in-windows-server-2012/

http://jarrettbroder.blogspot.in/2012/08/icmp-ping-blocked-on-windows-2008-server.html