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Easily try out vSAN 6.6 Encryption feature using KMIP Docker Container

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One of biggest feature introduced in the upcoming vSAN 6.6 release is the native vSAN Data-at-Rest Encryption capability. My good friend Duncan Epping even posted a video recently demo'ing the feature and showing how easy it is to enable with just a couple of clicks. Just like VM Encryption which was introduced in vSphere 6.5, vSAN Encryption also requires a Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) Server which needs to be associated with your vCenter Server.

The really nice thing about this is that because both VM Encryption and vSAN Encryption uses the exact same encryption library, as long as you have a supported KMS (which you can find over on the VMware KMS HCL here, more are being certified and added), you can actually leverage the same KMS for both types of encryption across different vSphere Clusters with different requirements. For the ultra paranoid, you could even "double" encrypt by running Encrypted VMs on top of a vSAN Encrypted Datastore 😉

As with any feature that relies on 3rd party tools, it can take some time to acquire evaluational licenses. For those of you who would like to try out either vSAN or VM Encryption from a functional standpoint, you can quickly get started in under a few minutes by using the KMIP Docker Container that I had built last year. This is a great way to familiarize yourself with the workflow or even try out some of the new vSphere and vSAN APIs if you plan to automate the KMIP configuration or even deployment of encrypted VMs. Another great use case for this is doing live demos and all you need is just a couple of Nested ESXi VMs and a Docker Container Host like Photon OS or even just your laptop for example. Below are the instructions on how to get started.

Disclaimer: It is also very important to note that you should NOT be using this for any production workloads or any VMs that you care about. For actual production deployments of VM Encryption or vSAN Encryption, you should be leveraging a production grade KMIP Server as PyKMIP stores the encryption keys in memory and will be lost upon a restart. This will also be true even for the virtual appliance, so this is really for quick evaluational purposes, do NOT run anything important that you care about due to the risks mentioned earlier.

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KMIP Server Docker Container for evaluating VM Encryption in vSphere 6.5

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There are a number of vSphere Security enhancements that were introduced in vSphere 6.5 including the much anticipated VM Encryption feature. To be able to use the new VM Encryption feature, you will need to first setup a Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) Server if you do not already have one and associate it with your vCenter Server. There are plenty of 3rd party vendors who provide KMIP solutions that interoperate with the new VM Encryption feature, but it usually can take some time to get access to product evaluations.

During the vSphere Beta, VMware had provided a sample KMIP Server Virtual Appliance based on PyKMIP, which allowed customers to quickly try out the new VM Encryption feature. Many of you have expressed interest in getting access to this appliance for quick evaluational purposes and the team is currently working on providing an updated version of the appliance for customers to access. In the mean time, for those who can not wait for the appliance or would like an alternative way of quickly standing up a sample KMIP Server, I have created a tiny (163 MB) Docker Container which can be easily spun up to provide the KMIP services. I haver published the Docker Container on Docker Hub at lamw/vmwkmip. The beauty of the Docker Container is you do not need to deploy another VM and for resource constrained lab environments or quick demo purposes, you could even run it directly on the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) as shown here, obviously not recommended for production use.

The Docker Container bundles the exact same version of PyKMIP that will be included in the virtual appliance, this is just another consumption mechanism. It is also very important to note that you should NOT be using this for any production workloads or any VMs that you care about. For actual production deployments of VM Encryption, you should be leveraging a production grade KMIP Server as PyKMIP stores the encryption keys in memory and will be lost upon a restart. This will also be true even for the virtual appliance, so this is really for quick evaluational purposes.

UPDATE (10/08/22) - The KMIP Docker Container is now available for both x86 and Arm platforms. Simply run docker pull lamw/vmwkmip and the correct architecture will automatically be downloaded.

Note: The version of PyKMIP is a modified version and VMware plans to re-contribute their changes back to the PyKMIP open-source project so others can also benefit.

Below are the instructions on using the KMIP Server Docker Container and how to configure it with your vCenter Server. I will assume you have worked with Docker before, if you have not, please have a look at Docker online resources before continue further or wait for the virtual appliance to be posted.

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