VMware NSX Security is a community-driven open-source MCP skill project, authored by Wei Zhou (VMware by Broadcom), and is not an official VMware product. Its purpose is to provide AI agents with VMware NSX DFW micro-segmentation and security-related operational capabilities. The project provides a total of 22 MCP tools, of which 11 are read-only and 11 are write, covering the following areas: distributed firewall policies and rules, security groups, VM tags, DFW exclusion list, Traceflow packet tracing, and IDPS.
Main capabilities: manage distributed firewall policies and rules; manage security groups and VM tags; read the DFW exclusion list (list_dfw_exclusions), and together with list_vm_tags, get_group, list_dfw_policies, indicate whether members have already been excluded; perform Traceflow packet tracing and output hop-level observations; manage IDS/IPS configuration.
DFW exclusion list explanation: for VMs in the NSX distributed firewall exclusion list, there is no DFW on their data path, meaning rules naming that VM exist but none take effect. In a VCF environment, management VMs (vCenter, VCF Operations, NSX Manager) are often included in it. dfw_excluded being null means the list cannot be read, and is not equivalent to false.
Installation and usage: the project uses the PEP 517 build system (hatchling), so there is no setup.py, and this is by design. If, after cloning the source, you encounter setup.py/setup.cfg not being found, or a prompt that editable mode requires a setuptools-based build, this indicates that pip is lower than 21.3 and cannot perform -e editable installation for non-setuptools backends. Editable mode is only for development convenience; it is not needed to run the tools. Offline/air-gapped environments can install from source: build the wheel on a networked machine and copy it to the target host, so the target host needs no network. The installation command is uv tool install vmware-nsx-security; after installation, the MCP server can be started with a single command (v1.5.15+), and it can be added to ~/.claude.json. If behind an enterprise TLS proxy, uvx mayreport invalid peer certificate: UnknownIssuer; in this case, the recommended approach is to use the mcp form that requires no network, or set UV_NATIVE_TLS=true.
Common workflows: micro-segment applications; output operation_state (IN_PROGRESS / FINISHED / FAILED), hop-by-hop observations distinguished by resource_type (Dropped* entries include reason and acl_rule_id), and a dfw_hits summary.
Security and constraint mechanisms: regarding dependency checks, a policy that still has active rules cannot be deleted, and a group that is referenced by DFW or gateway firewall rules/scopes, or referenced by a parent group, cannot be deleted; if reference scanning fails, group deletion will be aborted. Regarding audit logs, all write operations are recorded to ~/.vmware-nsx-security/audit.log. Regarding input validation, IDs are validated, and all API text is sanitized against prompt injection. Regarding dry-run, all CLI write commands support --dry-run. Regarding MCP deletion preview, delete_dfw_policy, delete_dfw_rule, and delete_group preview by default: when confirm=True is not passed, they return blast_radius (what will be removed, blockers, unmeasured) and do not perform deletion; when a blocker exists or reading fails, confirm=True is rejected. Regarding credential security, passwords are read only from environment variables and are never written to configuration files.
Version compatibility reference: for the SDK, see developer.broadcom.com/sdks (VMware NSX for Python SDK, the target for future migration); for the REST API, see developer.broadcom.com/xapis (NSX-T Data Center REST API); for CLI tools, see developer.broadcom.com/tools (VCF PowerCLI 9.1). Companion skills include vmware-nsx (networking), vmware-aiops (VM lifecycle), and vmware-monitor (monitoring).
