NFS service failing, QLogic HBAs on server [solved]

[Moebius]

On a new hardware and fresh Windows and Veeam VBR installation, the backups were working fine, but when trying to mount the NFS volume (e.g. for Surebackup) it failed. Also trying to mount the NFS datastore directly from the host returned a failure.

Disabling the Windows firewall made the NFS datastore immediately working. After some troubleshooting it appeared that port #111 wasn't opened on the firewall. However, the Veeam install had correctly set up a rule allowing traffic to the service VeeamNFSsvc, so it was unclear why traffic to that port didn't go through.

Netstat showed that VeeamNFSsvc.exe was listening to various ports, but not port #111. The module listening to this port was "portmap.exe". Hence, just allowing traffic to VeeamNFSsvc.exe (as Veeam does on install) didn't allow connection to port #111.
In my case, portmap.exe is a module of QLogic Sansurfer HBA Manager. I have QLogic HBAs, so that module is legit here.

After forcibly open port #111 on the Windows firewall the NFS service started working immediately.

There should be plenty of QLogic HBAs out there. Anybody else had the same issue?

[MPIDR]

Yes, we had exactly the same issue with Veeam 9.5 update 2 and QLogic HBAs. Manually allowing incoming connections on TCP 111 in the Windows firewall solved it.

[dcit]

Just for the record, we have had same issue too. But what was confusing is that it worked AFAIK without firewall rule allowing TCP 111 quite long time after adding QLogic FibreChannel HBA to our Veeam Backup server, then about week ago after restarting one of our ESXi servers for HW maintenance I was not able to mount Veeam NFS on it (I have found it thanks to SureBackup stopped working), but on other two servers it was mounted, and Veeam Instant VM recovery worked. Then today I have had tried to dismount it on those other servers and mount again, but that mount failed. After that when I was trying (on one of those server through ssh connection) to mount it manually:
esxcfg-nas -v 3 -a -o IP_address -s /VeeamBackup_SERVERFQDN VeeamBackup_SERVERFQDN

I saw in Wireshark on Veeam server, that it was trying to initiate TCP connection on port 111, but without any response, such as firewall was dropping it. Then using "netstat -anb" I have found that on port 111 is listening [portmap.exe], then using taskmgr (detailed view with addtional collumn image path) I have found that it is "c:\Program Files\QLogic Corporation\PortMap\portmap.exe". After allowing it on firewall it have started to work again, on all ESXi servers.

Btw I have got in may be interesting trap before - I was using nc (netcat) on ESXi for tests before in some phase of my testing, when I have tried to completely disable firewall on Windows Server with Veeam, but I was it seems blocked by ESXi firewall, so testing by "nc -v IP_of_Veeam_server 6161 -w 5" was useless, and I have not seen it in Wireshark on that server, but when I have tried that netcat test on server with working NFS it worked, which was for me rather confusing when all servers are in same vlan, so I have been thinking, that nothing should be blocking it - I have had not idea, that ESXi is firewalling outgoing connections.