I'm managing around 80 virtual machines in VMWare that need BitLocker encryption enabled. Everything has been going smoothly for the OS drives, which encrypt without any issues. However, there are about 15 machines where BitLocker isn't offering the option to auto-unlock the data drives. I inherited these systems about a year ago, so I'm not sure how they were originally set up. The newer VMs I've created don't have this issue and can auto-unlock just fine. I've checked various settings and I'm not sure what else to do. Any suggestions?
3 Answers
For BitLocker to offer auto-unlock, you typically need TPM access, USB key access, or network key unlocks. Are the VMs you're having trouble with isolated on specific hosts? Also, do they have TPM 2.0 hardware? You may want to look into that aspect.
I just figured this out myself! Some of my older servers were created using a v6.x ESXi installation, which might have involved a faulty template. After upgrading all the hosts to v8.x, I realized that those older VMs were set with hot-plug enabled on the SCSI adapter. This made the OS view the disks as 'removable', preventing the auto-unlock option from appearing. I had to decrypt the data drives, shut down the VMs, and add the advanced setting to each problematic VM to set "devices.hotplug" to "FALSE". After that, BitLocker worked as expected!
Super happy to hear you got it sorted out! Those older setups can definitely throw a wrench in things. Always good to check those advanced settings.
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