Impact on Guest OS Applications Using TLS 1.0/1.1 After Upgrading to ESXi 8.0 with TLS 1.2

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article describes the impact on Guest OS applications using TLS 1.0/1.1 following an upgrade of ESXi hosts to version 8.0, which uses TLS 1.2.

Environment

vSphere ESXi 8

Resolution

TLS support on ESXi hosts (now limited to TLS 1.2 and above in vSphere 8) only affects management communications—such as between ESXi hosts, vCenter, and external services (e.g., backup, monitoring, and API clients).

Virtual Machines operate independently of the ESXi host's TLS settings when it comes to network traffic inside the guest OS. Therefore, as long as the guest OS supports TLS 1.0/1.1, applications or websites depending on those protocols will continue to operate normally.

Additional Information

Services using TLS in vSphere