Port Conflicts between PRTG Network Monitor and VMware vCenter

By admin, December 28, 2010 2:07 pm

I didn’t know this could happen until last night. I restarted VMware vCenter server after installing Microsoft patches for Windows Serve 2008 R2. Then used vSphere client to connect to vCenter, suddenly it started to pop up with error, also found vCenter Server Service has stopped or crashed to be precious and error logs showed Event 1000 ID, luckily I found this is to do with vCenter port conflicts. I was also able to confirm this by another user’s post in VMware community who’s having the same port conflicting problem with PRTG and ESX 4.

As usual, my memory needs to rewind and back to the point where I installed PRTG Network Monitor 4 days ago, by trial and error, I stopped the PRTG Server and Probe Services, then I was able to restart vCenter server again and login with vSphere client. Finally, I was also able to restart PRTG server without any problem, PRTG somehow was able to bind itself dynamically to another port which vCenter couldn’t.

In additional, I did try to change the port for PRTG and its Probe services, but after restarting the server, somehow PRTG is still conflicting with vCenter’s port (I don’t know which port, but PRTG is using a range of ports above 23560)

The solution is quite simple but a bit troublesome, as it’s a matter of precedence, I just need to start vCenter Server service before starting the PRTG services MANUALLY every time after restarting the server.

If you know how to change the service start dependence or any proper way to solve this, please do let me know, as somehow I still couldn’t figure out the permanent solution for this port conflict problem, thanks!

5 Responses to “Port Conflicts between PRTG Network Monitor and VMware vCenter”

  1. AH says:

    Method 1:
    You can set the precedence of 2 services in register by dependance. But I don’t where to set.

    Method 2:
    Set the 2 services manually startup.
    Write a script to start this 2 services one after another. Place the script at startup which will auto run when server start up.

  2. admin says:

    Thanks for dropping the tips.

  3. RobVM says:

    Use the local group policy to run a machine start-up script. Set the services to start manually as AH says, have them start in the proper order via the script.

    Another issue we had with PRTG is that after uninstall of the app it left the services on the server, we had to delete them manually.

  4. admin says:

    Good morning, I found an easier way to do this under Windows Server 2008 R2 by using AH’s method 1.

    Go to Registry, under Services, then for those two PRTG services, simply add vpxd vctomcat to DependOnService.

    So the next time I restart the server, PRTG will always run after vpxd and vctomcat loaded.

    Finally please make sure the service for both PRTG is set to “Delayed Start” as well as for both vpxd vctomcat services.

    Hope this helps.

  5. Houston says:

    Thanks for this info. I knew it was PRTG but just couldn’t fathom why.

    We had just moved PRTG to our physical Vcenter server and it appeared to work fine, then after a restart things began failing. Obviously due to the port conflict.

    I’ve done as suggested here, setting the service dependencies, that appears to be the way to go. Thanks!

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