This post is the first in what I suspect will be a semi-long list of post-install hints and tips as I go through and start rebuilding my cluster as Vsphere 4. Hopefully I will learn a lot along the way… like for example the fact the ntp and snmp traffic is not allowed by default by the ESX Firewall.

But before we go there we first need to make sure that our services are starting at boot.

>chkconfig ntp on, … do the same for snmp

Then lets fix the firewall. First lets fix ntp.

esxcfg-firewall -e ntpClient

Then lets verify that all is well with…

esxcfg-firewall -q ntpClient

This command returns…

Service ntpClient is enabled

Ok now lets fix snmp using the same commands above, but specific for snmp.

esxcfg-firewall -e snmp and esxcfg-firewall -q snmpd.

While you are at it add the following to you snmp.conf

dlmod SNMPESX /usr/lib/vmware/snmp/libSNMPESX.so

Then restart snmp and ntp and you should be good.