VMware: Disable Datastore Browser from vCenter

By default, you will be able to use your web browser to find and download any files by browsing datastores in the vSphere inventory.

In order to disable the datastore browser you will need to edit the ‘vpxd.cfg’ file, to ensure the ‘enableHttpDatastoreAccess’ is set to false, as below:

<vpxd>
     <enableHttpDatastoreAccess>false</enableHttpDatastoreAccess> 
</vpxd>

Once the above configuration change has been made, restart the ‘VMware VirtualCenter Server’ service to apply the change.

This will now disable the datastore browser when connecting to the VMware vCenter server, you will still be able to connect to the datastore browser on an ESX/ESXi host.