Can vCenter Server 5.5 manage vSphere hosts that are located both on the local network and (with proper ports opened on the firewall) hosts located on other networks?
What I'm trying to do is:
We have four groups of vSphere hosts that are all firewalled from each other in our datacenter. I would like to have a single instance of vCenter Server managing all of the hosts. vCenter is hosted in a VM on one of these hosts, so what we have is one set of hosts on a local network to vCenter and three sets that are accessed externally.
What I've encountered, however, is that the "remote" hosts disconnect after a minute or so (return heartbeat doesn't make it to vCenter) unless I change the Managed IP Address in vCenter Server Settings to the external address of vCenter. That fixes the external hosts, but now causes the internal hosts to fail.
Is there a way to have it both ways? Some sort of workaround? I'd appreciate your thoughts. Thanks!