Persist an esxi firewall rule for outgoing syslog traffic

local.sh

# Append below lines in /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh. 
# Change host_address and host_port according to your syslog server configuartion.

/bin/cat > /etc/vmware/firewall/persistsyslog.xml << EOF
<!-- remote syslog configuration -->
<ConfigRoot>
  <service>
    <id>persistsyslog</id>
    <rule id='0000'>
      <direction>outbound</direction>
      <protocol>udp</protocol>
      <porttype>dst</porttype>
      <port>host_port</port>
    </rule>
    <enabled>false</enabled>
    <required>false</required>
  </service>
</ConfigRoot>
EOF

/sbin/esxcli network firewall refresh
/sbin/esxcli network firewall unload
/sbin/esxcli network firewall load
/sbin/esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r persistsyslog
/sbin/esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e false -r syslog
/sbin/esxcli system syslog config set --loghost udp://host_address:host_port
/sbin/esxcli system syslog reload

exit 0