Most of us know how important is MSDTC settings during vRA Installation or if we are moving vRA components to new network etc.

MSDTC coordinates transactions that update two or more transaction-protected resources, such as databases, message queues, file systems. These transaction-protected resources may be on a single computer, or distributed across many networked computers.

Below is the settings which you need to have on all IaaS and SQL server:

Why we need to open a huge range of port 1024 – 65535?

This query is asked by most of the customer whom I have worked with, because the port range to be opened is huge 1024 – 65535, however all the customer go with default value as recommended in the guide. We can follow Microsoft article to restrict the dynamic port range for MSDTC – Reference Link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/250367/configuring-microsoft-distributed-transaction-coordinator-dtc-to-work

Port Requirement is officially mentioned in VMware installation guide as well – https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Automation/7.4/vrealize-automation-74-installation-and-configuration.pdf

One main thing which is missing in the document is the port has to be opened bi-directional. Else the MSDTC communication will not work.

I usually use https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=2868 – MSDTC Ping Tool from Microsoft to check the DTC communication , nice and easy tool.