Configuring a firewall and services in an ESXi host

Configuring a firewall in any environment is one of the main security configurations that anyone does. To configure a firewall in a vSphere environment, we can use the following cmdlets:

• Get-VMHostFirewallDefaultPolicy

• Set-VMHostFirewallDefaultPolicy

• Get-VMHostFirewallException

• Set-VMHostFirewallException

Also, we can use the following cmdlets to manage the services in an ESXi host:

• Get-VMHostService

• Restart-VMHostService

• Set-VMHostService

• Start-VMHostService

• Stop-VMHostService

We will start with the firewall cmdlets, and then we will take a look at the services that control the cmdlets.

We can get a list and status of the services in an ESXi server using the Get-VMHostFirewallException cmdlet:

We can get a selective list as well; for example, to get a list of enabled services, we can use the same cmdlet with the –Enabled parameter:

PS C:\> Get-VMHostFirewallException -VMHost ESXi1.lab.com -Enabled:$true

We can use the Set-VMHostFirewallException...