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Quick Tip - Which vCenter Server Key Provider (KMS) is a VM using?

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vCenter Server requires a Key Management Service (KMS) for enabling VM Encryption, vTPM, or vSAN Encryption. Users have the choice of configuring the embedded Native Key Provider (NKP) built into vCenter Server and/or use an external KMS with the Standard Key Provider (SKP) option.


If you have more than one KMS configured in vCenter Server, you can specify one of the KMS key providers to be your default, which will automatically be used for any KMS-related activities. You can switch between the default KMS key provider and you can certainly specify a specific KMS key provider when using the vSphere API to provision a VM that will leverage VM encryption.

So how do you figure out which KMS key provider a VM is using?

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Support for Virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM) on ESXi without vCenter Server?

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Starting with vSphere 6.7, users have been able to add a Virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM) to a VM, enabling guest operating systems to create and store private keys using a software-based representation of a physical TPM 2.0 chip, that is completely transparent to the underlying OS.

A major benefit of using vTPM is that a physical TPM chip is NOT required in the underlying ESXi host and the vTPM secrets are protected by encrypting the .nvram file, where the secrets are stored.

The encryption keys that are used to encrypt the vTPM is provisioned by a key provider, which can be either be an external Standard Key Provider (SKP) that is KMIP-compliant or using vCenter Server's built-in Native Key Provider (NKP). It is the management of these key providers and their workflows that requires the use of vCenter Server, providing a centralized control plane and a seamless user experience when using the vTPM feature.

Most recently, I saw an influx of inquiries from our field and customers asking about using vTPM with a standalone ESXi host that is NOT managed by vCenter Server, primarily for homelab purposes. While this question has come up in the past, the increased interests might be due to more folks looking to deploy Windows 11, which now has a requirement of a TPM.

While sharing this observation with our lead engineer for VM Encryption, I came to learn that while vCenter Server is highly recommended for a good vTPM user experience, it is technically NOT required for vTPM to function. This sounded very intriguing but surely this solution would NOT be supported right?!

Interestingly, vCenter Server simply uses a set of public vSphere APIs that are available directly on an ESXi host to add or remove encryption keys that is generated from the key provider but the functionality to manage the encryption keys are available on an ESXi host. While this "manual" method is not as seamless as using vCenter Server, you can enable vTPM for a VM using a standalone ESXi host that is not managed by vCenter Server in a completely supported manner!

The lesson here, do not always assume something is NOT supported until you have been told it is NOT supported and always be learning! 😁

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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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