Guest Introspection Agent (vsepflt) being disabled on start up

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Checking the GI Agent (vsepflt) from command line using sc qc vsepflt is showing that the service is in a DISABLED state.

Environment

VMware Tools

Resolution

Note that the Guest Introspection Agent is added by using the Full Install method of VMware Tools. By default, the Agent is not installed.

After the Agent is installed and the Guest OS is rebooted it the START_TYPE should be 0 BOOT_START

Certain products like SCCM, Active Directory GPOs, and other access control mechanisms have the ability to control service start types on the OS automatically.

As the START_TYPE by default is in a BOOT_START state and no additional configuration change is being applied by the administrator, please work with your security team to determine if other control mechanisms are being applied to the Guest OS.