Virtual machines can use Intel SGX technology, if available on the hardware.
Requirements for vSGX
To use vSGX, your vSphere environment must meet these requirements:
- Virtual machine requirements:
- EFI firmware
- Hardware version 17 or later
- Component requirements:
- vCenter Server 7.0 and later
- ESXi 7.0 and later
- Guest OS support:
- Linux
- Windows Server 2016 (64 bit) and later
- Windows 10 (64 bit) and later
Intel Hardware
For supported Intel hardware for vSGX, consult the VSphere Compatibility Guide at https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php.
You might need to turn off hyperthreading on certain CPUs to enable SGX on the ESXi host. For more information, see the VMware KB article at https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/71367.
Unsupported VMware Features on vSGX
The following features are not supported in a virtual machine when vSGX is enabled:
- vMotion/DRS migration
- Virtual machine suspend and resume
- Virtual machine snapshots (Virtual machine snapshots are supported if you do not snapshot the virtual machine's memory.)
- Fault tolerance
- Guest Integrity (GI, platform foundation for VMware AppDefense™ 1.0)
Note:
These VMware features are not supported due to how the Intel SGX architecture functions. They are not the result of a VMware shortcoming.