The vCenter Server must disable or restrict the connectivity between vSAN Health Check and public Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) by use of an external proxy server.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-258948	SRG-APP-000516	VCSA-80-000281	SV-258948r961863_rule	2024-12-16	2

Description
The vSAN Health Check is able to download the HCL from VMware to check compliance against the underlying vSAN Cluster hosts. To ensure the vCenter server is not directly downloading content from the internet, this functionality must be disabled. If this feature is necessary, an external proxy server must be configured.

ℹ️ Check
If no clusters are enabled for vSAN, this is not applicable. From the vSphere Client, go to Host and Clusters. Select the vCenter Server >> Configure >> vSAN >> Internet Connectivity. If the HCL internet download is not required, verify "Status" is "Disabled". If the "Status" is "Enabled", this is a finding. If the HCL internet download is required, verify "Status" is "Enabled" and a proxy host is configured. If "Status" is "Enabled" and a proxy is not configured, this is a finding.

ℹ️ Check

If no clusters are enabled for vSAN, this is not applicable. From the vSphere Client, go to Host and Clusters. Select the vCenter Server >> Configure >> vSAN >> Internet Connectivity. If the HCL internet download is not required, verify "Status" is "Disabled". If the "Status" is "Enabled", this is a finding. If the HCL internet download is required, verify "Status" is "Enabled" and a proxy host is configured. If "Status" is "Enabled" and a proxy is not configured, this is a finding.

✔️ Fix
From the vSphere Client, go to Host and Clusters. Select the vCenter Server >> Configure >> vSAN >> Internet Connectivity. Click "Edit". If the HCL internet download is not required, ensure that "Status" is "Disabled". If the HCL internet download is required, ensure that "Status" is "Enabled" and that a proxy host is appropriately configured.