We're pleased to announce that the vSphere Client is now ‘Fully Featured' in vSphere 6.7 Update 1. This means that you can manage all aspects of your vSphere environment using the HTML5-based vSphere Client, no need to switch back and forth between the vSphere Client and the vSphere Web Client.
With vSphere 6.7 I'm happy to announce the support of TPM 2.0! This blog will go into detail on how we are leveraging the TPM 2.0 chip found on most modern servers. I'll also clarify some mis-conceptions and try to put into context what pieces are doing what during the boot of ESXi 6.7.
- VMware vSphere ESXi is one of the most popular hypervisor. It is used by most companies to manage their virtualization infrastructures. VMware vSphere version 6.7 lately released by VMware includes many more improvements like Configuration Maximums, Bug Fixes, ESXi Quick Boot, Persistent Memory(PMem) for the best performance and stability of the ESXi hypervisor.
- VMware vSphere Management SDK 6.7 VMware vSphere Perl SDK 6.7 VMware vSphere SNMP MIBs 6.7 VMware vSphere Virtual Disk Development Kit 6.7.0 VMware vSphere Web Client SDK 6.7 Development time Since vSphere 6.0 VMware started to extend their major release cycles. With 518 days, the development time of vSphere 6.7 was 3 months shorter than the.
- Right-click Host in the VMware Host Client inventory and select Create/Register VM. The New Virtual Machine wizard opens. On the Select creation type page of the wizard, select Deploy a virtual machine from an OVF or OVA file and click Next.
- For example, suppose that you have upgraded a vSphere license from 5.0 to 5.5 in My VMware. You assign the license to ESXi 5.5 hosts. After assigning the new vSphere 5.5 licenses, you must remove the old vSphere 5.0 license from the inventory.
First, we'll start out with 'What is a TPM?' and what its capabilities are.
Trusted Platform Module or 'TPM'
A TPM (Trusted Platform Module) is a computer chip/microcontroller that can securely store artifacts used to authenticate the platform (your PC or laptop). These artifacts can include measurements, passwords, certificates, or encryption keys. A TPM can also be used to digitally sign content and store platform measurements that help ensure that the platform remains trustworthy. The Trusted Computing Group has a great detailed overview of what a TPM is and does. I will attempt to provide a journeyman's overview below.
TPM Device Support
Since ESXi 5.x, ESXi has had support for TPM 1.2. Prior to 6.7 the API's and functionality of TPM 1.2 was limited to 3rd party applications created by VMware partners.
In 6.7 we have introduced support for TPM 2.0. TPM 2.0 and TPM 1.2 are two entirely different implementations and there is no backwards compatibility. For all intents and purposes, they are considered two different devices to ESXi.
If you are running 6.5 on a server with TPM 2.0 you will not see the TPM 2.0 device because there's no support in 6.5 for TPM 2.0. New features in 6.7 do not use the TPM 1.2 device.
TPM performance
Speed
A TPM is a very slow device. It typically lives on the same bus that serial devices, parallel ports and other low-speed devices live.
Cryptographic Signing
A TPM is not designed for high speed cryptographic operations. You're not going to do every cryptographic operations with a TPM. A CPU is leaps and bounds faster for that. A TPM would sign something to prove that it was signed by the TPM.
Storage Space
The amount of space to store measurements and credentials is measured in KB. It's very small. You are not going to store 100's of VM's keys on a TPM!
Attestation
The term 'attestation' is used by the InfoSec community quite a bit. It's a declaration or evidence of a result. In this case we are using an attestation of a host to provide evidence that the host has booted with Secure Boot enabled thereby ensuring only signed code is used.
How does ESXi 6.7 use a TPM 2.0 device?
At a high level, TPM 2.0 is used to store measurements of a known good boot of ESXi. This measurement is then compared by vCenter with what ESXi reports.
This is done by building upon the Secure Boot work done in vSphere 6.5. Read more about that work on my blog where I talk about ESXi and Secure Boot providing trusted assurance.
If you haven't read that blog yet, then please stop now and go read it. It will make what is discussed next much clearer.
In other words, the TPM provides a mechanism that provides assurance that ESXi has booted with Secure Boot enabled. By confirming that Secure Boot is enabled we can then ensure that ESXi has booted using only digitally signed code.
This is an excellent example of the iterative approach to security we are delivering on. In 6.5 we delivered Secure Boot support. In 6.7 we built upon that by delivering TPM 2.0 to provide assurance that Secure Boot is turned on.
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Note: If you are having issues when you enable Secure Boot and you are sure you have signed VIBs, please see https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2147606 and https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/54481 for more information. You may have upgraded using ESXCLI when you should be upgrading using the ISO.
Supply Chain Assurance
Before we get started, let me address a question I have gotten in the past that revolves around 'How can we be assured the firmware is valid?'. That is a great question but to be very clear, it is outside the scope of what is being discussed. Our 'Root of Trust' has to start someplace and for the ESXi and TPM 2.0 boot process it starts with valid hardware and firmware.
Supply chain assurance of hardware and firmware is rooted in discussions with your server and CPU vendors. They should be able to provide you with a level of assurance that their hardware and firmware meets your security needs.
This also brings into scope things like administrator access to firmware/BIOS settings and IPMI/iDRAC/iLO type of access to the server console. To provide assurance that ESXi can boot securely means you must have a good security process in place for this type of access. That means network isolation of those interfaces, limiting access to those interfaces to only the most trusted in your org and logging all changes to those interfaces. That's how you establish your 'root of trust'.
Boot time steps
This section will provide more technical detail as to what is going on behind the scenes. Below is an animated GIF of the boot and attestation process.
UEFI Firmware
At Power On, the Host Hardware loads the UEFIFirmware. The UEFI Firmware then validates the Boot Loader against the digital certificate stored in the server vendor supplied firmware. (See the Secure Boot blog for more info). If the Boot Loader was tampered with then the UEFI Firmware would halt the boot process.
Boot Loader
The term 'Boot Loader' consists of two components: The actual 'boot loader' and 'vmkboot' For ease of discussion and visualization we will consider them to be a single item.
Now that the UEFI firmware has validated the boot loader the vmkboot component can be loaded. Within the vmkboot component is a VMware digital certificate. This certificate is used to validate the signature of the ESXi Kernel.
vmkboot uses the TPM 2.0 API to write measured values, represented as hashes of modules and settings, to the TPM device. This includes whether Secure Boot was enabled. Hashes are SHA-512.
This process is done at each boot time.
vmkboot then validates the ESXi 'VM Kernel' using the VMware digital certificate.
Kernel
The term 'VM Kernel' consists of multiple components: The actual 'Kernel', the Init process and the Secure Boot Verifier. For the ease of discussion and visualization we will consider them to be a single item.
Kernel: The Kernel validates the Init process.
vCenter: TPM measurements, VIB metadata and untrusted event logs are sent to VC for inspection.
vCenter: vCenter compares TPM 2.0 stored hash values against hash values reported in the event logs and VIB metadata and makes an attestation assessment. If the values are the same, then the host has passed attestation. A quick way to demonstrate failing attestation is to disable Secure Boot!
Kernel: The Init process runs the Secure Boot Verifier, validating all VIB's. All VIB digital signatures chain to the VMware digital certificate in the Secure Boot Verifier. When this completes and all VIBs check out then processes like hostd can run and VM's can start.
Security Report
After the host has completed its boot process and the TPM and event log and VIB metadata measurements are compared by vCenter a security report is generated in the vSphere HTML5 client. You can see an example of the Security Report showing the attestation status of a number of hosts.
You will see a mix of hosts that have TPM 1.2 and 2.0 chips. TPM 1.2 hosts will always report an attestation of N/A. In the example above, you will see that host 10.20.235.198 has failed attestation.
The current method of retrieving the attestation status is via the report in the HTML5 client in vCenter. I'll be exploring other options from an automation standpoint in a future blog.
Some will ask questions such as 'But will this mean that VM's won't run on/vMotion to a host that has failed attestation?'. The answer is that VM's will continue to run on host that has failed attestation.
What I can say in response is that 'We are very aware of the ask for this capability' and we would really welcome your feedback.
Esxi 6.7 Vsphere Client Download
Standalone Hosts
The question of 'Can I get an attestation of a standalone host?' will come up. The answer is 'No'. The why is because there is no 3rd party (e.g. vCenter) comparing the TPM values with the ESXi event logs and VIB metadata. Querying the host directly means you are essentially asking ESXi to attest to itself. There is no 3rd party involved.
Wrap Up
There you have it! TPM 2.0 provides the assurance that Secure Boot did its job and vCenter provides a handy report to show which hosts have failed their attestation.
Esxi 6.7 Vsphere Client Configuration
Also, please check out the FAQ on vSphere Central for more info on TPM and virtual TPM. (Coming this week!)
If you have questions, post them here or find me on Twitter. My work Twitter account is: @vspheresecurity
mike
VMware vSphere ESXi is one of the most popular hypervisor. It is used by most companies to manage their virtualization infrastructures. VMware vSphere version 6.7 lately released by VMware includes many more improvements like Configuration Maximums, Bug Fixes, ESXi Quick Boot, Persistent Memory(PMem) for the best performance and stability of the ESXi hypervisor. The version 6.7 Update 2 with build number 13006603 is the newest version available at the moment. In this article you will find steps to install VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7. Before you begin the install, make sure that the physical server meets the minimum hardware requirements supported by ESXi 6.7 Update 2. Then downloadthe ESXi ISO image from the VMware official website.
Steps to Install VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7
The steps to install VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7 are same as previous versions of ESXi. If you are using HP, DELL or Cisco UCS Blade servers, mount the ISO image into the virtual media with connecting to the ILO, iDRAC or UCSM KVM Console. Else burn the ISO image onto a CD/DVD and make sure to configure the server to boot from CD/DVD placing the CD/DVD into the drive.
When you power on the server, the server will boot using ESXi installer as shown above. Two boot options are, boot from the ESXi installer 'ESXi-6.7.0-20190402001-standard Installer' or 'Boot from local disk'. Leave the default selection 'ESXi-6.7.0-20190402001-standard Installer' and press Enterkey on your keyboard to start the installer or wait 10 seconds to boot automatically.
Vsphere 6.0 Client Download
Now wait for the installer to extract installation files. This will take few minutes.
Wait for another few minutes for the installer files to be loaded.
Once the ESXi installer is loaded, you will get the welcome message as shown above. Press Enterkey on your keyboard to continue the installation.
Press F11 Key on your keyboard to accept the VMware End User License Agreement (EULA) and continue.
Installation will scan the server hardware for available devices and this would take a few minutes. If you encounter any issues double check the VMware hardware compatibility matrix or assist the server vendor support.
Available local or remote storage devices will be shown to select. If you have SAN devices configured and connected in a fabric those will be shown as remote devices. In my case I will be selecting the local disk to install ESXi hypervisor with pressing Enter key on the keyboard to continue.
Why won t my hard drive show up mac. Select a keyboard layout as shown above and press Enterkey on your keyboard to continue.
Type a password for ESXi root user. Please note the password must be at least 7 characters long and must not contain common sequences. Press Enterkey on your keyboard to continue.
Press F11key on your keyboard to confirm the install of ESXi 6.7 Update 2 hypervisor.
VMware ESXi 6.7 installation will continue for a couple of minutes.
Once installation is successfully completed, press Enter key on your keyboard to reboot the server.
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The server will initialize and boot the VMware ESXi 6.7 Update 2 hypervisor into the Direct Console User Interface(DCUI). If you have DHCP configured in the environment, it will take an IP from DHCP server. Otherwise, press F2 key on your keyboard to configure IP address, Hostname, DNS and other settings. In this example, the ESXi host is receiving IP 192.168.1.22 from DHCP server as shown above.
To access the hypervisor console, open Internet Browser and type the URL http://IP_Address_of_the_ESXi and press Enterkey on your keyboard to open the page. Accept the SSL certificate warning. This will open the vSphere Host Client. Type the username as root, type password then click Login button.
Please note that the vSphere Client for Windows (C# client) is no longer available since ESXi version 6.5 and the only way is to access ESXi Server server is through the web browser using vSphere Host Client. vSphere Host Client is HTML5 based management portal and is available in ESXi 6.7. When you install ESXi server 6.7 vSphere Host Client is embedded in the ESXi server itself and you don't have to install any application on your machine to access management portal of ESXi server.
After logging in successfully, vSphere Host Client user interface will open and you can now start creating virtual machines and virtual networks on this host.
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