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Nested ESXi installation using HTTPS boot over VirtualEFI in vSphere 8

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In vSphere 7.0 Update 2, an enhancement was made to the Virtual Machine's UEFI firmware called VirtualEFI that would enable ESXi to run in a VM (Nested ESXi) and perform an HTTP Boot given the ESXi bootloader URL without requiring any traditional PXE infrastructure.

This was especially useful for anyone testing or developing ESXi automation for use with ESXi Kickstart, where you can quickly prototype your automation without additional infrastructure dependencies and once the automation has been vetted, you can then leverage that exact same automation in your physical ESXi provisioning infrastructure.

The original solution had only supported HTTP and I recently came to learn that we can now also support HTTPS in vSphere 8!

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ACPI motherboard layout requires EFI - Considerations for switching VM firmware in vSphere 8 

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One of the important settings to consider when creating a new Virtual Machine in vSphere is the VM firmware, which can either be BIOS or EFI and can be configured under VM Options->Boot Options->Firmware. After selecting the desired guest operating system (GOS) in vSphere, the system will default to a recommended firmware type and can also be overridden by the user. Ultimately, the selection of the VM firmware should be determined by what your GOS supports.

If you ever need to change the VM firmware, you typically will need to re-install the GOS because it does not understand the new firmware change (just like in a physical server) and more than likely the GOS will also not boot due to this change and this is the existing behavior from GOS point of view.

For a net new VM creation, prior to vSphere 8, if you had configured a VM using EFI firmware and you have not installed a GOS and realized that you had made a mistake and needed to change the VM firmware to BIOS, you could easily do so using the vSphere UI or API and then install your OS. In vSphere 8 and specifically when using the latest Virtual Machine Compatibility (vHW20), you can not just switch the VM firmware after the initial VM creation, especially if you had started with EFI firmware and wish to change it to BIOS.

In doing so, you will come across the following error message:

ACPI motherboard layout requires EFI. Failed to start the virtual machine. Module DevicePowerOnEarly power on failed.

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Applying additional security hardening enhancements in ESXi 8.0

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While responding to a few ESXi security configuration questions, I was referencing our ESXi Security documentation, which includes a lot of useful information and latest best practices. It is definitely worth re-reviewing this section from time to time to take advantage of all the ESXi security enhancements to help protect and secure your vSphere environment.

In certain areas of the ESXi security documentation, I noticed that it mentions CLI and API, but it does not always provide an example that customers can then reference and use in their Automation, which is really the only guaranteed method to ensure configurations are consistent across your vSphere environment. After answering some of the security related questions, especially on the Automation examples, I figure it would be useful to share this information more broadly so that folks are aware of some of the new and existing security enhancements along with some of their implications if you are not implementing them.

Speaking of new ESXi security enhancements, one of the new features that was introduced in ESXi 8.0 is the ability to disable ESXi Shell access for non-root users. While this might sound like a pretty basic feature, applying this towards the vCenter Server service account vpxuser can help add another layer of protection for your ESXi hosts against attackers. It turns out that users with ESXi Shell access can also modify other local users password on ESXi host including the root user. By restricting ESXi Shell access for the vpxuser, you prevent attackers, which can also be insiders who have access to vCenter Server the ability to just change the ESXi root password without knowing the original password. As a result, this can lock you out of your ESXi hosts or worse, enable an attacker to encrypt your workloads, especially as the rise ransomeware attacks has been increasing.

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