Great news for all you VMware architects and administrators out there!  VMware have just made available the final release of the VMware vSphere hardening guide for download.  This is a must read in my opinion as it provides some excellent tips and best practices that can easily be applied to your vSphere environment. 

The guide is split into the following logical topic areas;  Virtual Machine, ESX/ESXi Host, vNetwork, vCenter and Console Operating System (COS). As mentioned on the hardening guide’s announcement page here, this vSphere version of the guide has the following “highlights”:

Structure: this version uses a standardized format, with formally defined sections, templates, and reference codes.  The goal is to increase clarity and reduce ambiguity, make it easier to reference individual guidelines, and most of all, enhance the ability to automate guideline enforcement.

Recommendation levels: in following with the formats used by NIST, CIS, and others, this guide categorizes all guidelines into three security levels.  Instead of recommending a single set of guidelines for all environments, this guide encourages more of a risk-based approach, so that individual administrators can decide which guidelines apply to their environment.

The vSphere hardening guide can be download from the VMware Security Team’s blog here.

I have been excitedly anticipating the release of the official VMware vSphere security hardening guides for a while now and the good news is that a public draft has just been made available. According to the VMware announcement these vSphere hardening guides have the following “highlights” over the previous VI3 guides:

• Structure: this version uses a standardized format, with formally defined sections, templates, and reference codes.  The goal is to increase clarity and reduce ambiguity, make it easier to reference individual guidelines, and most of all, enhance the ability to automate guideline enforcement.
• Recommendation levels: in following with the formats used by NIST, CIS, and others, this guide categorizes all guidelines into three security levels.  Instead of recommending a single set of guidelines for all environments, this guide encourages more of a risk-based approach, so that individual administrators can decide which guidelines apply to their environment.

There are over 100 recommendations between the guides which are open for public comment during the next month – though as the announcement mentions the final versions probably won’t differ greatly due to them already being part of a private review process.  Definitely worth a read to ensure your vSphere environment is following security best practices where possible.