I’m happy to announce that the vSphere 6 Hardening Guide Public Beta 1 is now available.

The guide is being provided as Excel spreadsheet. I’m also making a PDF doc available for easier viewing. In addition, I’ve also included an Excel spreadsheet of the guidelines that have moved out of the guide and into documentation. THIS IS INCOMPLETE. We are still working on some of that content. (that’s why this is a beta!)

Please read the blog on the changes that have happened to the guide. LOTS of changes and the blog will explain.

vSphere 6.0 Hardening Guide – Overview of coming changes | VMware vSphere Blog – VMware Blogs

One thing to mention is that you may see some guidelines that moved out of the guide and into documentation like VCSA NTP. This is because there’s no API to modify the values in version 6. If and when an API becomes available, settings like these will move back into the guide. Remember, the guide going forward is all about automation. As more stuff becomes API-accessible it will get added.

If you have questions, you can ask them in the vSphere Communities, reply to the blog or send me email at mfoley at VMware dot com.

Many thanks to all that have contributed so much already to this. (Pravin, Renate, Charu, Kevin, Yuecel and many in VMware R&D)

It’s been quite a journey but it’s not over yet which begs the question “When will the Hardening Guide go GA?”. The standard answer is always “Within 1 quarter of the GA of vSphere”. A HUGE amount of work goes into this document. As you can imagine, it’s VERY detail oriented. This only gets done faster when more people contribute and that means I really need your feedback.

I look forward to that feedback.

The files are available in the Security and Compliance Community. When the guide goes GA it will be available in the normal location.

Enjoy,

mike