Hello vCommunity,
Hope you are doing all great, today I wanted to share with you some tips on how to harden your VMs and avoid people to start messing around with it.
Let´s begin…
Disabling Copy & Paste between Guest OS and remote consoles by default.
Right click on the desired VM -> Edit Settings -> VM Options -> Advanced ->Configuration Paremeters -> Click on Edit Configuration.
Add the following rows:
Name |
Value |
---|---|
isolation.tools.copy.disable |
true |
isolation.tools.paste.disable |
true |

P.D: VM needs to be powered off to make the change.
Removing unnecessary devices (CD-ROM/Floppy)
Right click on the desired VM -> Edit Settings -> Virtual Hardware – Hover the device en right click on the X to remove the device, press ok to finish.
Before removing the devices:


After removing the devices:

Limiting the number of simultaneous connections:
Right click on the desired VM -> Edit Settings -> VM Options -> VMware Remote Console -> Maximum number of sessions.
Set the number of max simultaneous connections:
Example: 1

This is the message that the other user will receive if they are trying to open this VMs console:

You can try also locking the guest OS when the last remote user disconnects.

P.D: VM needs to be powered off to make the change.
Prevent a Virtual Machine User or Process from Disconnecting Devices
Right click on the desired VM -> Edit Settings -> VM Options -> Advanced ->Configuration Paremeters -> Click on Edit Configuration.
Name |
Value |
---|---|
isolation.device.connectable.disable |
true |
isolation.device.edit.disable |
true |

Prevent Virtual Machines from Taking Over Resources
Recommendation took from vSphere Security
1 Provision each virtual machine with just enough resources (CPU and memory) to function properly.
2 Use Shares to guarantee resources to critical virtual machines.
3 Group virtual machines with similar requirements into resource pools.
4 In each resource pool, leave Shares set to the default to ensure that each virtual machine in the pool receives approximately the same resource priority.
With this setting, a single virtual machine cannot use more than other virtual machines in the resource
pool.
Hope you enjoy this tips, do not forget to comment and share.
Jorluis