VMware NSX Security

Author: Wei Zhou, VMware by Broadcom — wei-wz.zhou@broadcom.com This is a community-driven project by a VMware engineer, not an official VMware product. For official VMware developer tools see developer.broadcom.com.

VMware NSX DFW microsegmentation and security MCP skill — 21 tools for distributed firewall policies/rules, security groups, VM tags, Traceflow packet tracing, and IDPS.

  • Read-only mode (v1.8.0) — one env var (VMWARE_READ_ONLY=true) strips all 11 write tools (DFW policy/rule writes, security groups, VM tags, Traceflow injection) from the MCP registry at startup, leaving the 10 read tools; ideal for audits, PoCs, and untrusted/local models. See Read-Only Mode.

Companion skills: vmware-nsx (networking), vmware-aiops (VM lifecycle), vmware-monitor (monitoring)

Quick Start

uv tool install vmware-nsx-security

mkdir -p ~/.vmware-nsx-security
cp config.example.yaml ~/.vmware-nsx-security/config.yaml
# Edit config.yaml with your NSX Manager host

echo "VMWARE_NSX_SECURITY_NSX_PROD_PASSWORD=your_password" > ~/.vmware-nsx-security/.env
chmod 600 ~/.vmware-nsx-security/.env

vmware-nsx-security doctor

Read-Only Mode

A prompt instruction is advisory — a model can ignore it. Read-only mode is structural: set VMWARE_READ_ONLY=true and all 11 write tools (DFW policy and rule create-update-delete, security group create/delete, VM tag apply/remove, Traceflow packet injection) are removed from the MCP registry at startup — list_tools() never offers them, so the model cannot call what it cannot see. The 10 read tools remain, including DFW rule stats and IDS/IPS profile and signature inspection. Off by default, and fail-closed: if the mode is requested but cannot be guaranteed, the server refuses to start.

Three ways to enable:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vmware-nsx-security": {
      "command": "vmware-nsx-security",
      "args": ["mcp"],
      "env": { "VMWARE_READ_ONLY": "true" }
    }
  }
}
  • Per-skill override: VMWARE_NSX_SECURITY_READ_ONLY=true (takes precedence over the family-wide VMWARE_READ_ONLY)
  • Config alternative: read_only: true in ~/.vmware-nsx-security/config.yaml

Precedence: per-skill env → family env → config → off. Startup logs list exactly which tools were withheld.

What It Does

Category Tools
DFW Policy list, get, create, update, delete, list rules
DFW Rules create, update, delete, stats
Security Groups list, get, create, delete
VM Tags list tags, apply tag, remove tag
Traceflow run trace, get result
IDPS list profiles, signature status + settings

Total: 21 MCP tools (10 read-only + 11 write)

MCP Server Setup

After uv tool install vmware-nsx-security, start the MCP server with one command (v1.5.15+):

# Recommended — single command, no network re-resolve
vmware-nsx-security mcp

# With a custom config path
VMWARE_NSX_SECURITY_CONFIG=/path/to/config.yaml vmware-nsx-security mcp

Add to ~/.claude.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vmware-nsx-security": {
      "command": "vmware-nsx-security",
      "args": ["mcp"],
      "env": {
        "VMWARE_NSX_SECURITY_CONFIG": "~/.vmware-nsx-security/config.yaml"
      }
    }
  }
}
Alternative: uvx (no install) or legacy entry point 
# Run without installing (requires PyPI access each launch)
uvx --from vmware-nsx-security vmware-nsx-security mcp

# Legacy entry point (still works, kept for backward compatibility)
vmware-nsx-security-mcp

Behind a corporate TLS proxy? uvx may fail with invalid peer certificate: UnknownIssuer. Use the recommended vmware-nsx-security mcp form above (no network needed), or set UV_NATIVE_TLS=true.

Common Workflows

Microsegment an Application

# 1. Create groups by tag — via the create_group MCP tool
#    (tag_scope=tier, tag_value=web → matched as Condition value "tier|web";
#     multiple criteria types — tag/IP/segment — are ORed)

# 2. Create DFW policy
vmware-nsx-security policy create web-app-policy --name "Web to App" --category Application

Tag a VM

# Find VM and its external ID
vmware-nsx-security tag list my-vm-01

# Apply tag using the external ID
vmware-nsx-security tag apply <external-id> --scope tier --value web

Trace a Packet

vmware-nsx-security traceflow run <src-lport-id> \
  --src-ip 10.0.1.5 --dst-ip 10.0.2.10 --proto TCP --dst-port 443

Output reports operation_state (IN_PROGRESS/FINISHED/FAILED), hop-by-hop observations discriminated by resource_type (Dropped* entries carry reason + acl_rule_id), and a dfw_hits summary.

Safety

  • Dependency checks: Cannot delete a policy with active rules, or a group referenced by DFW rules/scopes; group deletion aborts if the reference scan fails
  • Audit logging: All write ops logged to ~/.vmware-nsx-security/audit.log
  • Input validation: IDs validated; all API text sanitized against prompt injection
  • Dry-run mode: All CLI write commands support --dry-run
  • Credential safety: Passwords only from env vars, never in config files

Companion Skills

Skill Scope Tools Install
vmware-aiops ⭐ entry point VM lifecycle, deployment, guest ops, clusters 49 uv tool install vmware-aiops
vmware-monitor Read-only monitoring, alarms, events, VM info 27 uv tool install vmware-monitor
vmware-nsx NSX networking: segments, gateways, NAT, IPAM 33 uv tool install vmware-nsx-mgmt
vmware-storage Datastores, iSCSI, vSAN 11 uv tool install vmware-storage
vmware-vks Tanzu Namespaces, TKC cluster lifecycle 20 uv tool install vmware-vks
vmware-aria Aria Ops metrics, alerts, capacity planning 28 uv tool install vmware-aria

Version Compatibility

NSX Version Support Notes
NSX 9.1 / VCF 9.1 ✅ Full DFW + Security Group + Traceflow + IDS/IPS via Policy API. VDS 7.0+ required (N-VDS removed in NSX 9).
NSX 9.0 / VCF 9.0 ✅ Full Same as 9.1. Bare-metal NSX agent removed.
NSX 4.x / VCF 5.x ✅ Full All features supported.
NSX-T 3.2 / VCF 4.5 ✅ Full Policy API stable.

Official Broadcom References

License

MIT

Key dates

PyPI data
Data sourced directly from PyPI's database.
  • Released:
Newer release available (1.8.9)

1 maintainer

PyPI data
Data sourced directly from PyPI's database.
Avatar for zw008 from gravatar.com zw008

Credits

Author: Wei Zhou

License expression

MIT
View SPDX License List

Requires

Python >=3.10

Tags

ai-ops dfw firewall mcp microsegmentation nsx nsx-t vmware

Classifiers

Report project as malware

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