[VMC on AWS] How to enable whitelist strategy in Distributed Firewall

Products

• VMware Cloud on AWS

Issue/Introduction

Distributed Firewall (DFW) defaults to blacklist behavior. This means that traffic is permitted unless specifically blocked by a "deny" rule.
If you want to enable whitelist strategy, you can use it by changing the following setting.
Also, this article is based on SDDC 1.12 version and might be changed in the future.

Resolution

[Whitelist strategy]
Please change the setting of "Default Layer3 Rule" from "Allow" to "Drop" as below.
・Path : VMC console > SDDC > Networking & Security > Security (Distributed Firewall) > APPLICATION Category
・Action : Drop

※NOTE: If you change the setting to "Drop", Please note that all communication between virtual machines will be blocked.



[Blacklist strategy]
・Path : VMC console > SDDC > Networking & Security > Security (Distributed Firewall) > APPLICATION Category
・Action : Allow

Additional Information

Add or Modify Distributed Firewall Rules