With simplified usage-based licensing with no upfront fees, no annual minimums, and built-in support, VMware Cloud Providers and MSPs can offer customers better security with encryption and key management at a lower cost.

Townsend Security today announced new flexible licensing of Alliance Key Manager, their FIPS 140-2 compliant encryption key management server (KMS) to VMware Cloud Providers and MSPs. The new program allows these businesses to offer better security with encryption and VMware-certified key management at a lower cost, while maintaining their current pay-per-use and pay-as-you-go business model.

VMware Cloud Providers and MSPs need to help their customers achieve encryption of VMs and vSAN storage to meet compliance requirements and new regulations like GDPR and CCPA. However, typical commercial KMS solutions are expensive, hard to maintain, and have complex licensing requirements. Legacy KMS systems create a business problem for VMware partners who are trying to grow their business, compete with large Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), and don’t match the VMware partner’s business model. Townsend Security has addressed all of these obstacles with their new program for VMware Cloud Providers and MSPs.

The new program offered by Townsend Security allows VMware Cloud Providers and MSPs the ability to encrypt VMs and vSAN with FIPS 140-2 and KMIP compliant Alliance Key Manager. The solution is easy to install, configure, and deploy. Once deployed it requires no routine maintenance and partners have total flexibility in how and where they deploy the KMS system to help their customers. Crucially, the  new Townsend Security program will match the VMware Cloud Provider’s business model eliminating KMS licensing headaches, unmanageable reporting requirements, and unreliable KMS high availability implementations.

“Many VMware Cloud Providers and MSPs provide usage-based deployments for their end customers. Alliance Key Manager fits seamlessly into their business strategy to match the way they do business,” said Patrick Townsend, Founder & CEO of Townsend Security. “With Alliance Key Manager, you will never have up-front fees, annual minimums, complex software maintenance contracts, or restrictions on how you do business. Our partners are empowered to grow their business without concerns about how to allocate KMS costs. Predictable SaaS usage-based pricing makes it easy to sell, implement, and support end customers and their security needs - and an additional benefit is the incremental revenue and positive impact on margins.”

Once enrolled in Townsend Security’s new VMware Cloud Provider and MSP program, the company will assign training and support resources to help partners get started. There is no charge for training and Townsend Security’s technical support team is available for 24/7 business interruption support. 

Visit www.townsendsecurity.com/msp to learn more about Townsend Security’s new VMware Cloud Provider and MSP partner program.

VMware has become the most trusted name in on-premise computing infrastructure. Because of its ease of use and administration, reliability and security, VMware is able to provide exceptional services to small and large organizations alike. As these organizations move to the cloud, VMware hosting partners and managed service providers (MSPs) are able to service this market by providing off-premise deployments of VMware and an extensive array of VMware management and administrative services. For more information on how VMware hosting providers can better secure customer data, check out our "Definitive Guide - Encryption Key Management for VMware Cloud Providers" page.

I recently sat down with Patrick Townsend, Founder and CEO of Townsend Security, to talk about how Townsend Security is helping VMware hosting providers meet the challenge of encryption and encryption key management, while supporting the usage-based business model core to many of these hosting providers.  Additionally, Patrick discussed VMware architecture, VMware security, delivering compelling hosting & services, and compliance, standards, and encryption.

Hi Patrick. In recent years VMware has embraced the movement to the cloud with key partnerships with leading cloud service providers. What is less well known is that VMware has spawned and supports a broad set of hosting providers that serve local and regional markets. These VMware hosting providers also provide the expertise and managed services that many large cloud providers do not.

There are a fair number of VMware hosting providers and MSPs now with their own hosted, or cloud, platforms who are running VMware full stack implementations for their customers. Customers now have many options for managing their VMware infrastructure on premise or at a VMware hosting provider data center.  Many of these customers maintain both on-premise and hosted environments to meet their customers’ business needs. The VMware ecosystem is growing and resilient, and an important part of the IT services landscape.

Security has got to be essential for these hosting providers and MSPs. What do you think they are doing well and where could they use a little help?

Well, security is a core focus of VMware applications, and the security features have had a lot of time to mature. For example, VMware now offers encryption in several of their products. However, the deployment of proper encryption relies on support from third party KMS vendors. Realizing the importance of key management, VMware adopted the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) standard, which allows vendors like Townsend Security to provide key management solutions that allow businesses to store and manage their encryption keys through their entire lifecycle.

Townsend Security is proud to help VMware hosting providers and MSPs implement encryption and do it the right way that matches their business model.

So, let’s spend a minute and discuss delivering compelling hosting and services.

VMware hosting providers and MSPs are rapidly changing the way that VMware customers are managing their IT infrastructure. These VMware partners are filling a services and support gap left by typical, large cloud service providers. Hosted VMware infrastructure, Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), automated backup and recovery, and expertise on demand provide compelling value to VMware end customers. Amazingly, many of these VMware hosting partners are providing a far more affordable solution than large Cloud Service Providers. Townsend Security’s Alliance Key Manager is filling the KMS gap for VMware hosting providers and MSPs by providing an Enterprise KMS system that matches the way they do business. Gone are the complexities of sourcing, deploying, licensing and administering a KMS for the VMware environment. Townsend Security empowers the VMware hosting provider with on-premise and customer premise solutions for every VMware KMS need.

There are a few strategies that these hosting providers and MSPs can use to secure customer data in VMware environments.  For example, data can still reside on-premises or in the cloud and be encrypted in VMs or in vSAN, or even through Virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM).  First, let’s cover On-Prem and the Cloud. 

Sure. Many VMware hosting providers and MSPs often are the experts who manage a customer’s on-premise VMware infrastructure. If you don’t have in-house expertise these partners can step up to help you. This means that the same security tools that are used at the hosting site need to be available at the customer site. This is a core part of the value that a VMware hosting provider and MSP provides to their customers - run VMware on-premise, on their cloud, or combine the two. Some VMware MSPs provide expertise and services to help their customers move to one of the larger cloud platforms. 

If you are a VMware hosting provider and you provide this type of service to help customers move to Microsoft Azure VMware Solution, Google VMware Cloud Engine, or IBM Cloud for VMware, or other full-stack VMware cloud service, we can help you with your KMS needs in the same way. 

Let’s circle back to how data is being encrypted in VMware

As a VMware hosting provider or MSP, you are able to quickly and easily deploy encryption of VMs for your customers with vSphere encryption. It is important to not forget about also deploying a KMS. The second most popular encryption option in a VMware environment is the encryption of vSAN virtual directories. The VMware architecture for key management for vSAN is the same vSphere KMS cluster configuration used for encrypting VMs. Encryption of vSAN storage is one of the great ways to protect databases in the VMware infrastructure. It can be expensive to upgrade Oracle, SQL Server or MongoDB to get encryption support, but you can easily provide encryption at rest by deploying these databases on encrypted vSAN storage at a fraction of the cost of an upgrade. And you can do encryption at rest for open source databases that do not directly implement encryption or proper key management. This includes MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite and others.

Another option is to use OS encryption through the virtual trusted platform module (vTPM), right?

The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip is implemented on many Intel architecture servers and provides an additional level of encryption key protection in traditional server environments. Unfortunately, the TPM architecture works poorly in a VMware environment where workloads can move and migrate between servers. Thankfully, VMware came to the rescue with Virtual TPM (vTPM)!  By installing the appropriate vTPM drivers from VMware you can achieve TPM security that works natively with your VMware platform. vTPM also leverages the same vSphere KMS interface, so encryption and proper key management are easy to deploy.

How is Townsend Security helping VMware hosting providers and MSPs with encryption and key management? 

Townsend Security has been a VMware partner for many years.  Our KMS, Alliance Key Manager, is certified by VMware on all releases of vSphere and vSAN that support encryption. At Townsend Security we have worked hard to create a hosting provider/MSP program that takes the pain out of a KMS partnership. Most notably, if you provide VMware hosting services on a usage-based model, we will help you deliver a KMS for encrypted VMs and vSAN with the same model. For example, if you are charging your customers per virtual machine or per main memory, depending on how much you use, we will snap right in to your environment and help you deliver encryption of VMs and vSAN in the same way.We do this with no upfront fees, no annual license charges or separate maintenance fees, we just make it really simple to deploy and use for the VMware hosting provider.

Is there anything else that you would like to share about your partner program?

First, it is very easy and simple to get started with our partner program.  Just visit www.townsendsecurity.com/msp. If you are interested in more information, there is a short form to fill out. We make it extremely cost effective for hosting providers to deploy encryption and key management for their customers.  I’d also like to mention that our KMS is certified for every version of vSphere and vSAN that support encryption, is validated for PCI-DSS compliance, and has been through a FIPS 140-2 validation.

You can actually download Alliance Key Manager for VMware directly from our website and immediately load it into VMware.  We also have our support team ready to help you get deployed - without a charge. It just takes minutes. We are proud to have lowered the barrier to entry and administrative overhead typically associated with encryption key management - which makes it easier than ever for VMware hosting providers and MSPs to offer better security to their customers.

To hear this conversation in its entirety, download the podcast “Delivering Secure VMware Hosting with Encryption & Key Management” to hear Patrick Townsend, Founder and CEO, further discuss VMware architecture, VMware security, delivering compelling hosting & services, and compliance, standards, and encryption.

This blog is an excerpt from the white paper Delivering Secure VMware Hosting with Encryption & Key Management.

VMware is the most trusted name in on-premise computing infrastructure. Its ease of use and administration, reliability and security provide exceptional services to small and large organizations alike. As organizations move to the cloud, there are now a large number of VMware hosting partners and managed service providers (MSPs) who provide off-premise deployments of VMware and an extensive array of VMware management and administrative services. This white paper discusses how Townsend Security is helping VMware hosting providers meet the challenge of encryption and encryption key management, while supporting the usage-based business model core to many of these hosting providers.

VMware Architecture and Benefits

The benefits of VMware in the data center are now well recognized. Reduction in hardware and utility costs, reduction in administrative costs, improvement in managing ever-changing workloads, resilience and business continuity, and exceptional security are just some of the primary benefits. This is why VMware is the leading infrastructure virtualization technology on a global basis.

In recent years VMware has embraced the movement to the cloud with key partnerships with leading cloud service providers. What is less well known is that VMware has spawned and supports a broad set of hosting providers that serve local and regional markets. These VMware hosting providers also provide the expertise and managed services that many large cloud providers do not. 

The growth of the VMware hosting provider eco-system provides important support for VMware customers. Customers now have many options for managing their VMware infrastructure on premise or at a VMware hosting provider data center. Many customers maintain both on-premise and hosted environments to meet their business needs. The VMware eco-system is growing and resilient, and an important part of the IT services landscape.

VMware and Security

While VMware has always been a leader in IT security, the company recognized the importance of encryption and proper encryption key management to meet security best practices and evolving compliance regulations. In 2016 VMware released version 6.5 of vSphere which enabled built-in support for encryption of virtual machines (VMs) and virtual storage (vSAN). In any encryption strategy, it is important to protect the encryption keys using a purpose-built key management security system that secures the keys away from the protected information. The VMware security architecture integrates with a key management server (KMS) to protect the encryption keys that are used by ESXi and vSAN. The interface between vSphere and the key management server is based on the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP), an open standard for KMS systems. 

In vSphere the administrator defines a primary key manager and one or more failover key managers using the KMS Cluster module. vSphere manages the failover to a backup key server in the event the primary key server is not available. This also enables failover to a disaster recovery VMware node in an automatic fashion. The result is a robust implementation of encryption with key management based on the open OASIS KMIP standard and deployed in a highly resilient fashion.

VMware Hosting and MSP Partners

VMware hosting partners and MSPs are called on to deploy proper security in the VMware infrastructure. Security is largely provided by native VMware applications such as NSX and others. However, the deployment of a key management system depends on support from third party KMS vendors. Townsend Security is one of those vendors with its Alliance Key Manager solution.

Unfortunately, most enterprise KMS systems are expensive, difficult to deploy, lack needed failover reliability, and have complex licensing and management requirements. Many VMware hosting providers provide their infrastructure and services on a usage-based model. Enterprise KMS systems generally do not fit this delivery, reporting and billing model.

Townsend Security is solving this problem by providing its Alliance Key Manager solution on a usage basis. VMware hosting providers will benefit from the Townsend model as it matches their business delivery model and makes KMS affordable to their end customers. When your encryption key management strategy lines up with your business model you are able to manage your growth in a predictable way.

Delivering Compelling Hosting and Services

VMware hosting providers and MSPs are rapidly changing the way that VMware customers are managing their IT infrastructure. These VMware partners are filling a services and support gap left by typical, large cloud service providers. Hosted VMware infrastructure, Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), automated backup and recovery, and expertise on demand provide compelling value to VMware end customers. 

Townsend Security’s Alliance Key Manager is filling the KMS gap for VMware hosting providers and MSPs by providing an Enterprise KMS system that matches the way they do business. Gone are the complexities of sourcing, deploying, licensing and administering a KMS for the VMware environment. Townsend Security empowers the VMware hosting provider with on-premise and customer premise solutions for every VMware KMS need.

Which Encryption Option Should you Choose, vSphere VM or vSAN?

Data security is paramount for sensitive data-at-rest. Fortunately, protecting your data in VMware is relatively easy with the introduction of vSphere VM encryption in version 6.5 and vSAN encryption in version 6.6. Even better, for most folks, you won’t have to choose between each option, you will likely use both as needed. That said, there are some times when you might prefer one over the other. With that in mind, here are some of the features for each and how they are the same/different.

One of the most clear cut cases on preferring one encryption option or the other is in a multi-tenant situation. VMware gives these examples:

Engineering and Finance may have their own key managers and would require their VM's to be encrypted by their respective KMS. Or maybe your company has been merged with another company, each with their own KMS. Additionally, you may have a "Coke & Pepsi" scenario of two unrelated tenants. VM Encryption can handle this use case using the API or PowerCLI Modules for VM Encryption.

Since each VM is encrypted by a different key, vSphere VM encryption may be better suited for multi-tenant situations. In this way, not only will each tenant be assured that their sensitive data is not commingled with other tenants data (separate VMs), but their data is protected by separate keys.

Beyond that, VMware notes that “vSAN has unique capabilities for some workloads and may perform better in those situations.” So, if you are protecting larger datastores with a single tenant, vSAN would be your best option.

With these distinctions in mind, here is the best news: They are equally easy to set up! We have put together two videos to highlight the steps to get encryption enabled in each environment:

vSphere VM Encryption

For a more detailed look at vSphere VM encryption, please visit our post: vSphere Encryption—Creating a Unified Encryption Strategy. Here is a partial list of steps for enabling vSphere VM encryption:

• First, install and configure your KMIP compliant key management server, such as our Alliance Key Manager, and register it to the vSphere KMS Cluster.
• Next, you must set up the key management server (KMS) cluster.
• When you add a KMS cluster, vCenter will prompt you to make it the default. vCenter will provision the encryption keys from the cluster you designate as the default.
• Then, when encrypting, the ESXi host generates internal 256-bit (XTS-AES-256) DEKs to encrypt the VMs, files, and disks.
• The vCenter Server then requests a key from Alliance Key Manager. This key is used as the KEK.
• ESXi then uses the KEK to encrypt the DEK and only the encrypted DEK is stored locally on the disk along with the KEK ID.
• The KEK is safely stored in Alliance Key Manager. ESXi never stores the KEK on disk. Instead, vCenter Server stores the KEK ID for future reference. This way, your encrypted data stays safe even if you lose a backup or a hacker accesses your VMware environment.

vSAN Encryption

For a more detailed look at vSAN encryption, please visit our post: vSAN Encryption: Locking your vSAN Down. Here is a partial list of steps for enabling vSAN encryption:

• First, install and configure your key management server, or KMS, (such as our Alliance Key Manager) and add its network address and port information to the vCenter KMS Cluster.
• Then, you will need to set up a domain of trust between vCenter Server, your KMS, and your vSAN host.
• You will do this by exchanging administrative certificates between your KMS and vCenter Server to establish trust.
• Then, vCenter Server will pass the KMS connection data to the vSAN host.
• From there, the vSAN host will only request keys from that trusted KMS.
• The ESXi host generates internal keys to encrypt each disk, generating a new key for each disk. These are known as the data encryption keys, or DEKs.
• The vCenter Server then requests a key from the KMS. This key is used by the ESXi host as the key encryption key, or KEK.
• The ESXi host then uses the KEK to encrypt the DEK and only the encrypted DEK is stored locally on the disk.
• The KEK is safely stored separately from the data and DEK in the KMS.
• Additionally, the KMS also creates a host encryption key, or HEK, for encrypting core dumps. The HEK is managed within the KMS to ensure you can secure the core dump and manage who can access the data.

Final Thoughts

vSphere VM and vSAN encryption for data-at-rest is a powerful tool in protecting your sensitive data - for both companies and VMware Cloud Providers. It is standards-based, policy-based, and KMIP compliant. This makes it both powerful and easy to enable. While each has different strengths that make them a better choice in some situations; most of the time, it will just come down to needing to either secure data in a VM or vSAN datastore.

If you have sensitive data in VMware and are not encrypting, enable encryption today! We are happy to help.

(Part one of this series deals with VM encryption. This post will cover vSAN encryption)

The Rise of Storage Area Networks

Nowadays, VMware vSAN provides hyper-converged storage for the enterprise business. As VMware puts it, “in addition to being incredibly simple to deploy and provision, Virtual SAN allows you to scale storage and compute resources, eliminating costly forklift upgrades.”

But, as most know, vSAN, first released in 2014, did not grow in a vacuum. Physical SANs started to gain traction in the early 2000’s as our need for data storage exploded. The SANS Institute, in 2002, highlighted these trends and the advantages that a SAN provided:

• Higher availability of systems and applications
• Costly IT purchases reduced
• Higher scalability of storage architecture
• Increased IT staff efficiency
• Higher ability to utilize the full value of a company’s information assets

But even though a SAN brought these advantages to its user, it had one major limitation: Storage administrators were still tied to managing the data via where it physically lived, needing to pre-allocate storage on various servers.

vSAN, however, overcomes the limitations of a purely physical SAN. Since vSAN is a software layer that sits on-top of the server, it allows for greater flexibility of your storage capacity. According to MicroAge:

“vSAN is software-defined storage that enables organizations to pool storage capabilities and automatically provision virtual machine storage. They can dynamically scale performance and storage capacity as needed and render underlying physical storage accessible to virtual machines through a policy-driven control pane. [O]rganizations use SANs to interconnect shared pools of storage devices to different servers. vSAN extends this local storage to a shareable storage in each server, enabling other servers to access data over the LAN without a traditional shared storage device.”

Another advantage of vSAN: greater (and much easier to implement) data security. With version 6.6 of vSAN, VMware introduced native encryption for your data-at-rest. vSAN encryption is baked right into vSAN and, as Jase McCarty of VMware puts it, “with a couple of clicks, it can be enabled or disabled for all items on the vSAN datastore, with no additional steps.”

This gives the enterprise business much greater control in how and when they secure their data. That said, let’s take a look at some additional advantages of using vSAN encryption.

The Advantages of vSAN Encryption

Minimizes Impact on Performance

With encryption there will always be a performance impact. It is just the nature of the beast. But with vSAN encryption, VMware reports:

• Minimal impact to CPU cycles while data is being encrypted.
• A 5-15% CPU penalty and no performance overhead. This overhead is representative of running vSAN with dedupe and compression turned on.

This is great news for those needing to encrypt large amounts of stored data. You can now protect your data and, in large part, maintain the integrity of your performance.

Streamlines Operations

As mentioned earlier, vSAN encryption is easy to configure and entire clusters can be encrypted with just a few clicks. There is zero guess-work with:

• No third-party encryption to install, configure, and maintain.
• No encryption at the hardware layer. Encryption at the hypervisor layer (vSAN encryption) has considerably less overhead than deploying encryption at the hardware layer.

Bring Your Own Key Manager

You can bring your preferred key manager to manage your encryption keys. Since vSAN encryption is KMIP 1.1 compatible, you are free to use a FIPS 140-2 compliant encryption key manager, like our Alliance Key Manager.

How Do I Enable vSAN Encryption?

The last and biggest advantage: vSAN encryption is easy to enable and use. This means that securing your sensitive data with AES encryption is not a time-intensive task. To prove the point, here is a quick guide to getting encryption up and running for your vSAN clusters:

• First, install and configure your key management server, or KMS, (such as our Alliance Key Manager) and add its network address and port information to the vCenter KMS Cluster.
• Then, you will need to set up a domain of trust between vCenter Server, your KMS, and your vSAN host.
• You will do this by exchanging administrative certificates between your KMS and vCenter Server to establish trust.
• Then, vCenter Server will pass the KMS connection data to the vSAN host.
• From there, the vSAN host will only request keys from that trusted KMS.
• The ESXi host generates internal keys to encrypt each disk, generating a new key for each disk. These are known as the data encryption keys, or DEKs.
• The vCenter Server then requests a key from the KMS. This key is used by the ESXi host as the key encryption key, or KEK.
• The ESXi host then uses the KEK to encrypt the DEK and only the encrypted DEK is stored locally on the disk.
• The KEK is safely stored separately from the data and DEK in the KMS.
• Additionally, the KMS also creates a host encryption key, or HEK, for encrypting core dumps. The HEK is managed within the KMS to ensure you can secure the core dump and manage who can access the data.

That’s it! VMware has made encrypting your data in vSAN both simple and secure.

Final Thoughts

Let’s face it, storage area networks are a target-rich environment for malicious actors. Whether it’s:

• Customer data
• Intellectual property
• Financial transactions
• Legal records
• Patient information
• And much, much more….

It all needs to be protected. Network administrators, though, face these challenges:

• They have little control over what gets put into storage.
• Sensitive data, many times, is stored by end users with little thought to encrypting it.
• There is a dizzying array of compliance regulations, internal security standards, and best practices that must be complied with.

vSAN encryption can help. With a few clicks in vSAN entire virtual disks can be encrypted. And with a FIPS 140-2 compliant encryption key manager, like Alliance Key Manager, the keys for your AES-NI encryption will be properly protected and full lifecycle managed.

If you are not protecting your data in vSAN, get started today! It’s not a matter of if your data will be hacked, but when.

(Part one of this series deals with VM encryption. Part two will cover vSAN encryption)

A Unified Way to Encrypt VMs

“Dance like nobody’s watching. Encrypt like everyone is.”
~Werner Vogels, CTO at Amazon.com

Data is a bedrock asset for today’s enterprise business. Its value is too great to ignore. Data security, then, is mission critical for those looking to maintain brand integrity, intellectual property confidentiality, and customer trust.

VMware vSphere 6.5 gave its users powerful data security tools; among them AES-NI encryption. The reason this is great news: instead of an ad-hoc approach to encrypting sensitive data where individual sources of encryption are found for each type of database or application, you can now encrypt directly in VMware’s hypervisor creating a unified source for encrypting and managing that encryption. And through their KMIP interface, managing your encryption keys is pretty painless. But more on that later.

vSphere encryption, then, allows the enterprise business to uniformly manage their encryption for both VMs and vSAN and ensure that all sensitive data within VMware is secured. This enables companies to create an encryption strategy for their sensitive data. Let’s look at some of the main advantages, specifically VM encryption, that vSphere encryption provides.

The Advantages of Using VM Encryption

With VMware vSphere 6.5 and up, you are able to encrypt individual VMs. The main difference between VMware encryption and other encryption methods is ease

of management. As VMware puts it, because “VMs are treated as objects that can have a policy applied to them, there is no need to manage them individually.”

Here are some of the advantages that this brings:

• Encryption is configured and managed at the hypervisor level, not within an individual VM.
  • vSphere encryption is agnostic in regards to what is stored within the VM.
  • There are not multiple encryption products for each guest OS, database, or application.
• Encryption is policy based. Applying it, then, can be done to as many or few VMs that you want.
• You can bring your prefered key manager to manage your encryption keys. Since vSphere encryption is KMIP 1.1 compatible, you are free to use a FIPS 140-2 compliant encryption key manager, like Alliance Key Manager.

Now that we know some of the advantages of using VM encryption, let’s looks what is (and is not) encrypted. Why? VMware did a great job making sure all sensitive information can be secured. The list below will go to illustrate that.

What Is/Is Not Encrypted

According to VMware, here are the items that can be encrypted (and those that can’t) with vSphere’s VM encryption:

What can be encrypted:

• VM files
• Note: Most VM files can be encrypted. This set of files can include the NVRAM, VSWP, and VMSN files. If you use the vSphere Web Client to create an encrypted VM, all virtual disks will be encrypted as well.
• Virtual disk files
• Note: Data in an encrypted VMDK file is never written in plaintext to storage or a physical disk, and is never transmitted in plaintext. The VMDK descriptor file, however, is not encrypted and contains a key ID for the key encryption key (KEK) as well as the encrypted data encryption keys (DEKs).
• Host core dump files
• Note: When you enable encryption mode on an ESXi host the core dump is always encrypted.

What is not encrypted (and why):

• Log files
• Why: these are not encrypted because they contain no sensitive data.
• VM configuration files
• Why: the VM configuration information, stored in the VMX and VMSD files, contains no sensitive data.
• Virtual disk descriptor files
• Why: the descriptor file is omitted from encryption/decryption functions to support disk management without a need for an encryption key.

How it Works

Now that we know some of the advantages of VM encryption and what can and cannot be encrypted; here is the last reason to use vSphere to create a unified encryption strategy—it is easy to set up. Here is a quick video showing how easy it is.

Here are those steps for those that would like to just read it:

• First, install and configure your KMIP compliant key management server, such as our Alliance Key Manager, and register it to the vSphere KMS Cluster.
• Next, you must set up the key management server (KMS) cluster.
• When you add a KMS cluster, vCenter will prompt you to make it the default. vCenter will provision the encryption keys from the cluster you designate as the default.
• Then, when encrypting, the ESXi host generates internal 256-bit (XTS-AES-256) DEKs to encrypt the VMs, files, and disks.
• The vCenter Server then requests a key from Alliance Key Manager. This key is used as the KEK.
• ESXi then uses the KEK to encrypt the DEK and only the encrypted DEK is stored locally on the disk along with the KEK ID.
• The KEK is safely stored in Alliance Key Manager. ESXi never stores the KEK on disk. Instead, vCenter Server stores the KEK ID for future reference. This way, your encrypted data stays safe even if you lose a backup or a hacker accesses your VMware environment.

It really is that easy. Not only can govern your encryption at the hypervisor layer, deploy standards based AES encryption on a per VM basis (allowing you to secure only those workloads that require it), but you can do so quickly. It is a great encryption option for any business.

Final Thoughts

VMware vSphere VM encryption creates a unified strategy for protecting your sensitive data within vSphere by using the hypervisor to perform the encryption. This means that you do not need to first consider what is in the VM (guest OS, specific databases, etc.) in order to encrypt it. According to VMware, this yields the following benefits:

• No modification to OSs within VMs
• No changes needed to existing applications
• No specialized hardware or infrastructure required
• Policy-based enforcement that is supported by vSphere

All this and more means that it is easier than ever to secure your company’s sensitive data. Once you have configured your vSphere vCenter Server to enable encryption, simply choose which VMs you want to encrypt and your data is secured. It’s that easy.

According to RiskBased Security, for the first half of 2019, over 3,800 breaches were reported, breaching over 4.1 billion records. When you compare that to the first half of 2018, “the number of reported breaches was up 54% and the number of exposed records was up 52%.” With the pace of breaches only accelerating, the time to create a unified encryption strategy for your sensitive data is now.

You may be using VMware’s vSAN technology and not even know it. vSAN is the core technology in most of the Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) solutions on the market today. If you are running VMware for your on-premise or cloud infrastructure, you have vSAN at your fingertips. So, how can you leverage vSAN to meet compliance regulations and save money? Let’s take a deeper dive.

First, why is it important to encrypt our data?

Almost all compliance regulations require that you protect the sensitive information of your customers, employees, and service providers. This includes the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the New York Department of Financial Services act (23 NYCRR 500), the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), and many, many others. As we now know a major data breach that loses unprotected sensitive data will have severe impacts on any organization whether public or private. Encryption is now a core requirement of any security strategy, so how do we get there?

Can’t I use the native encryption facility in my database?

Almost all commercial and open source databases provide a path to using encryption that is built right into the database. Unfortunately, getting access to the encryption feature usually means upgrading to the Enterprise version of the database—and this can be an expensive proposition. This is true of Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, MySQL, and many others. Of course, an upgrade to the Enterprise version usually gets you a lot more capability than encryption. An upgrade brings a lot of additional value, but the reality is that a database upgrade is beyond the budget of many small to midsize companies. So what can you do?

How can vSAN encryption help?

Beginning with version 6.6, VMware vSAN provides for built-in encryption support and a link to vSphere for proper encryption key management. By default, vSAN virtual disks are not encrypted. However, it is really easy to configure a vSphere KMS Cluster, deploy a key management server (KMS), and turn on vSAN encryption. You don’t need to reload your vSAN virtual disks and it is fast to deploy. With very little time and effort you can achieve encryption at rest for your database and other files.

To enable VMware vSAN encryption you only need a key management system that supports the OASIS standard Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP). Our Alliance Key Manager fits the bill perfectly, and there are other solutions. You just deploy the key manager, grab the key manager certificate and private key, install them on your vCenter cluster, configure a KMS Cluster in vSphere, and enable encryption. Voila, you are done in a short period of time.

Do you know what else is cool? You can use the same KMS Cluster configuration to encrypt your VMs and to enable VMware vTPM in your virtual machines. That’s a lot of capability with very little time, effort and expense.

Is it risky to run my database in a vSAN volume?

The VMware vSAN facility is mature and now trusted by large and small Enterprises. As mentioned above, vSAN is a core component of almost all of the major Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) solutions. You may be using vSAN and not even be aware of it. There is also some good news—VMware has published a number of solution briefs and architecture guides to help you deploy Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, and other databases directly on vSAN. Of course, you need to be aware of high availability requirements for both vSAN and for your KMS, but the existing vSAN documentation is quite good on this front. And deploying a high availability instance of our Alliance Key Manager solution is easy, too. More information here.

Today, you can confidently deploy your relational and NoSQL databases onto encrypted vSAN virtual disks safely and easily.

Saving money with vSAN encryption

We all live with constraints on our IT budget and our management team wants to see a good return on our IT investments. If you find that you don’t have the budget needed to upgrade your database for native encryption, deploying vSAN encryption is a great alternative. vSAN is a VMware facility that you already have and adding a key management solution is now very affordable. You can deploy our affordable Alliance Key Manager solution and avoid future upgrade and build-out costs. vSAN encryption and good key management is within the reach of every IT budget.

Ouch, I have vSAN but I don’t have a place to run a KMS

VMware vSAN is popular in many cloud and edge computing environments, but you might not be deploying VMs in that environment. Our key manager runs as a VMware virtual machine, so this can be a bit problematic in these environments. But there is an elegant solution to this—run the key manager in the cloud. For example, you can launch our Alliance Key Manager as an EC2 instance in AWS, or as a virtual machine in Azure, and use it to protect your vSAN volumes in edge environments. Alliance Key Manager works the same way in the cloud as it does as a VMware VM. And you can use one key management instance to serve multiple vSAN edge deployments. Problem solved!

Some precautions

There are some common sense precautions related to vSAN encryption. One is to be sure that you don’t deploy your KMS virtual machine onto a vSAN volume that it is protecting. If you have issues with the vSAN volume you don’t want it to impact the KMS, and vice versa. Also, as in all production environments where you deploy encryption and key management, be sure to deploy a failover key management server. It is easy to do with Alliance Key Manager and it will help you recover quickly and easily.

Alliance Key Manager for vSAN

Alliance Key Manager is certified by VMware for use with vSAN and vSphere encryption. All versions of vSAN and vSphere that support encryption are certified. In addition to VMware certification, Alliance Key Manager is validated to meet the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), is KMIP compliant, and is FIPS 140-2 compliant. You can run Alliance Key Manager as a VMware virtual machine, as a cloud instance (Azure and AWS), in a Docker container, or as a hardware security module (HSM). No charge evaluations are available directly from the Townsend Security website, and we welcome partner inquiries. More information here.

Historically, encryption and key management have been deployed at the application or database level. There are even several databases who’s “Enterprise” edition (like Microsoft SQL Server or MongoDB, for example) include options for encryption and external key management built right in the database. Unfortunately, these types of databases are the exception, rather than the rule. If you were to examine an organization's IT infrastructure, you are more likely to find a wide variety of databases and applications, some natively supporting encryption, some not, and many containing unprotected private information or personally identifiable information (PII). Simply put, their encryption strategy has been limited due to cost and resources required to properly protect private information. 

Fortunately, these same enterprises have deployed VMware infrastructure, and starting with vSphere 6.5 and vSAN 6.6, are able to encrypt sensitive workloads in VMware using the advanced cryptographic features in vCenter. To put it a little more simply, businesses can protect their sensitive information in their internal applications and databases that don’t natively support transparent encryption with tools offered by VMware.

I recently sat down with security expert and CEO, Patrick Townsend, to talk about how enterprises can leverage VMware’s vSphere and vSAN to encrypt private data - regardless of whether their applications or databases support encryption. 

Hi Patrick. Let’s jump right in. With the introduction of vSphere encryption in 6.5 and vSAN 6.6, it has become much easier for businesses to encrypt private data. In the past they have relied on encryption at the application level or used the encryption that comes with their database. With so many enterprises deploying VMware, they no longer need to let their application or database limit their encryption strategy.

That’s absolutely correct. There are databases like Microsoft SQL Server and MongoDB EA, for example, that have encryption built right in - which makes it easy. But there are other times when encryption can be much more difficult. SQL Server Standard edition and the Community edition of MySQL, for example, do NOT support encryption. So, you have these widely used databases, with lots of unprotected data because that can be a challenge to encrypt. Using vSphere and vSAN encryption is a great way to address these gaps in an organization's encryption strategy with industry standards-based encryption. 

Sometimes the barrier to encryption is the cost of upgrading databases to “Enterprise” editions. Almost all of us are running VMware in our infrastructure anyway, so in many cases we already have the tools we need - the encryption support is there, we just need to use it. VMware even provides excellent guidance for encrypting databases, like Oracle and SQL Server, for example.

So, one of the most obvious questions. How is performance?

This is always a concern that people bring up. I can say that VMware has done a great job with performance in both encrypted VMs and vSAN - and performance continues to improve. These days, you can even deploy a large database on vSAN. This is a technology that has matured and gained the trust of customers, and they are adopting it at a rapid rate. There is also some really good material from VMware about performance expectations - white papers, solutions briefs, etc. Furthermore, both vSphere and vSAN take advantage of the Intel AES-NI on-chip accelerator for encryption, which provides a great performance boost.

Of course the key manager is the critical component that ensures the encrypted data stays encrypted. Without proper key management, it is like leaving the keys to your house under the welcome mat. What should our readers be looking for in a key manager?

Here is something that I think VMware did right. You must use a key manager in order to activate vSphere encryption of VMs or vSAN encryption. Within vSphere you are able to create a KMS cluster, define failover key managers, multiple KMS clusters, etc. They did a great job. Furthermore, VMware based their interface on the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) industry standard. Other databases vendors, for example, allow local storage of encryption keys. That is really such a BAD security practice, so I am glad that VMware saw implications of that. If you are going to use VMware data-at-rest encryption, you are going to use proper encryption key management and that will be much better from a security perspective. I also think that this reflects on VMware as a company and their concern for their enterprise customers.

What to look for in a key manager? All enterprise level key managers are validated to FIPS 140-2 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Be absolutely sure you key management vendor has completed this validation. Secondly, your key manager should support the KMIP protocol. Finally, if you are taking credit cards for payments, look for a PCI validation. We validated our Alliance Key Manager with both Coalfire and VMware, as a joint project. This helps our customers easily get through an audit, which can be quite difficult.

While I have you, I was hoping you could also offer some clarification on the term KMS. For example, VMware defines KMS as a Key Management Server. Amazon defines their KMS as a “Key Management Service.” How should our readers be thinking about a KMS in regards to VMware encryption?

Ah, the chaos of three letter acronyms. KMS, in general terms, means Key Management Server. It is a broad term covering key management devices that manage the entire lifecycle of a key - from creation to destruction. You are right, Amazon does call their key management service KMS, which can lead to some confusion. This service is NOT to be confused with a key management server - and does not give you full control over the entire key lifecycle. It is a shared administrative environment where you share access to the keys with Amazon.

You need to approach cloud service provider (CSP) implementations of key management services with trepidation. It is important for YOU to hold exclusive access to your keys and that only you have the only administrative control. Cloud lockin can be another concern as well.

To hear this conversation in its entirety, download our podcast Don’t Let Your Application or Database Limit Your Encryption Strategy and hear Patrick Townsend further discuss Encrypting applications and databases that don't natively support encryption, encryption performance, and other fundamental features of an enterprise grade key manager.

Many VMware customers know that they can encrypt their virtual machines that are managed with vSphere and other VMware tools. VMware vSAN encryption can also provide important protections for data-at-rest in vSAN virtual disks. I wanted to share some thoughts I’ve received from our VMware customers and partners on some of the benefits of using vSAN storage with encryption enabled.

A Simple Way to Encrypt

When you have a large database, it can be inefficient to store the data in a directory or folder directly in your virtual machine. vSAN can be much easier to manage from an administrative and recovery point of view and your VMware applications can easily connect to the vSAN volume. vSAN is configured using the VMware tools you already know how to use and managing vSAN storage is easy.

Did you know that you can enable vSAN encryption to protect that database with sensitive data? You can enable vSAN encryption on existing virtual disks or on new virtual disks that you create. The process is simple and does not require any downtime for your application - and vSAN encryption enables the use of a KMIP compatible key manager like our Alliance Key Manager so that you stay lined up with industry standards and security best practices. It is an easy way to improve your overall security posture.

A Simple Way to Meet Compliance

Many of our VMware customers are struggling to implement encryption on their databases to meet compliance regulations and to protect the organization’s digital assets. Although encryption and key management have become much easier over the years, it can still seem like a daunting task. VMware vSAN encryption to the rescue! It is easy to implement with the tools you already have, and you can deploy an affordable key management solution such as our Alliance Key Manager to fully meet compliance requirements and security best practices. You configure key management directly through the KMS Cluster facility in vSphere, and then activate vSAN encryption. Alliance Key Manager does not impose any limits on the number of virtual disks you protect, nor on the number of nodes that connect to the key manager.

A Simple Way to Save Money

Some databases, such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server, require expensive license upgrades to enable encryption capabilities. This cost can be out of reach for many small to medium size organizations. Using vSAN encryption is an affordable way to achieve a better security posture using the tools and the IT professionals you already have.

You might be wondering if VMware supports the deployment of these databases on vSAN volumes. The answer is absolutely YES! You will find substantial documentation from VMware on doing exactly this. The documentation includes reference architectures and analysis of performance impacts. You can confidently move forward with vSAN encryption knowing that VMware has invested time and effort to make sure you are successful.

Lastly, we know that some VMware users have deployed the free version of vSphere. There are some costs associated with upgrading to the paid tier of vSphere in order to get the ability to encrypt VMs and vSAN. If this is where you are today, talk to us about how we can help with the uplift to the next level of vSphere capability.

Resources:
vSAN Documentation
Oracle Database on VMware vSAN Solution Overview
Architecting Microsoft SQL Server on VMware vSphere
Pointers to our AKM for vSphere/vSAN Solution Brief 

One of the easiest ways to implement encryption controls in your VMware infrastructure is to activate vSphere and vSAN encryption. With vSphere VM encryption you can insure that all VM images are encrypted at rest, and with vSAN encryption you can set up virtual disks that are fully encrypted protecting any files that you place there. vSphere encryption was implemented in version 6.5, and vSAN encryption was implemented in version 6.6. All subsequent versions of vSphere and vSAN include these capabilities. (Note that you must be on the Enterprise or Platinum edition).

In both vSphere and vSAN the key manager is integrated using the open standard Key Management Interoperability Protocol, or KMIP. This means that any key management solution that supports the necessary KMIP interface can work as a vSphere or vSAN key manager. Our Alliance Key Manager solution implements this support, and is already in use by our VMware customers. 

The most common question we get about these new encryption features is: How do I manage failover for the key managers?

This is a great question as VMware is a part of your critical infrastructure, and key management has to work with your high availability strategy. There are two parts to this question and lets dig into both of them:

Defining Key Managers to vSphere KMS Cluster

Key managers are defined to vSphere using the option to configure the KMS Cluster. A KMS Cluster configuration allows you to define more than one key manager. So you have a readily available path for failover. The first key manager configuration is the primary key manager, and all subsequent key managers in the KMS Cluster are failover key managers. vSphere will always use the first key manager you define and treat it as the primary. 

In the event vSphere cannot connect to the primary key manager, it will try to connect to the second key manager in the KMS Cluster configuration. If that one fails it will try the third one, and so forth. The failover order is the order in which you define key managers in the KMS Cluster, so you should keep that in mind as you define the key managers.

While vSphere allows you to create multiple KMS Cluster definitions, very few VMware customers need multiple definitions. Just put your key manager definitions in a single KMS Cluster and you are set to go. 

If you have failover clusters for VMware, be sure to define the KMS Cluster for the failover environment, too!

Implementing Key Mirroring in Alliance Key Manager

Now that you have failover key managers defined to the KMS Cluster, you need to activate key mirroring between the primary key manager and each failover key manager. This is really easy to do, and you don’t need any third party products to implement key mirroring with Alliance Key Manager. Real time, active-active key mirroring is built right into the solution. You can SSH into the key manager, provide credentials, and then take the menu option to set up the primary or secondary key server. Answer a few questions and you will have key mirroring enabled between two or more Alliance Key Manager servers.

Our Alliance Key Manager solution implements full support for vSphere and vSAN encryption key management and has everything you need to get started. Adding encryption to your VMware environment is easy. VMware did a great job with this implementation of key management support and you can easily realize the benefits of protecting VMware infrastructure.

Alliance Key Manager documentation for vSphere can be found here.

You can download Alliance Key Manager and get started right away. Here is where to go to start the process.

Townsend Security will help you get started with vSphere and vSAN encryption. There is no charge for the evaluation or evaluation licenses and you will get access to the Townsend Security support team to ensure you have a successful project.

Patrick