Hello All!  I hope you are able to stay cool!

NSX-V – End of Life reminder – NSX-V is End of Life and will be out of support on January 16, 2022.  If you are running NSX-V you need to migrate to NSX-T.  The licenses you have today do work with NSX-T.  There are 2 methods to migrate.  There is also a whitepaper on migrating from NSX-V to NSX-T.

Updates on booting ESXi hosts SD-cards/USB Sticks – vSphere 7.0 Update 3 has been released which automates the settings to allow ESX hosts to safely use SD-Cards.  Refer to the information in the Notes from the Field section below for full details.

Product Support Watch

The following products are nearing the End of General Support.  You can find the full list on the VMware Lifecycle Product Matrix.

Horizon View / Workspace ONE

• Dynamic Environment Manager 9.9 – 10/31/21
• Dynamic Environment Manager 9.10 – 12/12/21
• Dynamic Environment Manager 9.11 – 3/17/22
• App Volumes 4 – 1/14/22
• Horizon 7.0 ESB – 3-17-22
• Workspace ONE UEM Console 2005 (SaaS Only) – 12/10/21
• Workspace ONE UEM Console 2006 (SaaS Only) – 12/17/21
• Workspace ONE UEM Console 2007 (SaaS Only) – 1/20/22
• Workspace ONE UEM Console 2008 – 3/15/22
• Workspace ONE UEM Console 2010 (SaaS Only) – 4/14/22

NSX

• HCX 3.5.3 – 10/30/21
• NSX for vSphere (NSX-V) – 1/16/22 – must transition to NSX-T

vRealize Suite

• Lifecycle Manger 2.1- 10/31/21
• Lifecycle Manger 8.3 – 2/4/22
• Lifecycle Manger 8.4 – 4/15/22
• Log Insight 4.8 – 10/31/21
• vRealize Operations Manager  7.5 – 10/31/21
• vRealize Network Insight 5.0-5.3 – 10/31/21
• vRealize Orchestrator 8.3 – 2/4/22
• vRealize Orchestrator 8.4 – 4/15/22
• vRealize Automation 8.3 – 2/4/22
• vRealize Automation 8.4 – 4/15/22
• vRealize Network Insight 5.0-5.3 – 10/31/21
• vRealize Operations Manager 7.5, 8.0, 8.0.1, 8.1 – 10/31/21

General

• Fusion 12 – 12/14/21
• Workstation 16 – 12/14/21
• VMware Tools 10.1.x – 11-15-21
• Site Recovery Manager 6.5, 8.1, 8.2 – 11/15/21
• vSphere Replication 6.5, 8.1, 8.2 – 11/15/21

Notes from the Field

VMworld 2021

• Announcements review
• On-demand replay for VMworld sessions is available on VMworld.com.  The Best of VMworld On-Demand has all of the most popular sessions in one place.

vSphere 7 Update 3 was released on 10/05/2021.  This release does include the automatic RAM Disk SD-Card fix for ESX hosts that boot from SD-Cards (introduced in vSphere 7.0 Update 2).  This fix will allow vSphere 7.x to boot safely from SD-Cards. It is still highly recommended to planfully change your boot devices to higher performance storage for future released of ESXi.    You can read more about that below…

• What’s new in vSphere 7 Update 3 – Technical overview video
• Release notes – vCenter / ESXi

There is 1 known issue that I have heard of at this point:

• vCenter Lifecycle Manager – when upgraded to 7.0 U3, there may be a problem updating hosts when logged in with AD account – see KB 85962 for details and work around.

Upgrade Planning – If you haven’t upgraded in a while, I have put together a review of the resources you can use to plan your upgrade –

Patching Windows 2012 R2 using Windows Update on a VM using the ParaVirtual SCSI Driver may cause issues.  I stumbled onto a thread in Reddit that describes the issue.  If I understand it correctly – Windows Update is replacing the paravirtual driver with a different VMware SCSI Driver which causes issues for Windows 2012 R2.  VMware KB 82290 describes the issue and fix.

Announcing VMware Tanzu – Community edition – An open source, freely available way to experience Kubernetes on VMware.

Enterprise Learning Subscription
If you have a number of team members who need training – consider the  VMware Enterprise Learning Subscription.  The ELS is a 365-day on-line all you-can-take training subscription.  All of the courses are on-line.  You can take the courses at your pace. There are courses that qualify for certification purposes and a certification voucher is included.

CPUs scheduled for Support Discontinuation in future major releases of vSphere
VMware has updated the list of CPUs for Support Discontinuation in future major releases of vSphere.   While these CPUs will still be supported for vSphere 7.0x, they may have support discontinued in the future.  Most of these are either already at End-of-Life / End-of-Support or will be soon.

\vSphere 7.0 Update 2 and USB-based Boot Media (SD Cards/USB Sticks) – If your ESX hosts boot from these devices – you need to read this important information before you upgrade as the boot devices you are using may have issues.

vSphere 7 Update 2 introduces changes to core storage used by the Hypervisor and increases the I/O requirements past the endurance thresholds of some SD cards.  This change is described in the vSphere 7.0 Update 2 VMware ESXi Installation and Setup Guide.  On  page 12 of the guide, it specifies that the ESX-OSData partition “must be created on high-endurance storage devices”.

Currently,  information about the internal SD cards can’t be checked on the VMware Compatibility Guide, as hardware manufacturers do not provide that information to VMware. Please be aware that the hardware vendors are responsible for managing and updating their information listed in the compatibility guide.   If you have questions about the endurance specifications of your SD Cards – please check with your hardware manufacturer.

KB 83376 – discusses the issues that can arise when the SD card boot device has exhausted its write capability.  This KB also describes a work around VMware has developed to allow low endurance SD Cards to work with vSphere 7 Update 2.  It involves a manual one-time config change which moves certain highly accessed files to a RAM Disk. This should become automatic in a future release of vSphere 7.x.

While this should help with vSphere 7.x, I am not sure what the future holds for SD Cards as ESX boot devices.    If I had to guess, I would imagine that the I/O requirements will increase over time as ESX continues to evolve.

It is advisable to consider adding higher performance/endurance boot devices into a future budget or into your next hardware refresh plan.