Hot Topics

• vSphere 6.5 and 6.7 are heading into End of General Support in just a few months – October 15th, 2022.  If your environment is still running these versions – now is the time to plan your upgrade.  Check out this Upgrade Planning Guide to help you get started.

Upcoming Events

VMware Explore
August 29 – September 1, 2022
In-Person at the Moscone Center
San Francisco, California

Same event – new name!  VMworld has become VMware Explore!

Check out the Content Catalog to start planning your sessions!

Important Date

• July 19th – Breakout Session scheduling begins

Learn more and Register

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.

vSphere – vCenter and ESXi

• 6.5 – 10/15/22
• 6.7 – 10/15/22

vSAN

• 6.5, 6.6, 6.7 – 10/15/22

NSX 

• NSX-V (all versions) – General Support ended January 16, 2022 – Customers should migrate to NSX-T

Horizon View / Workspace ONE

• Dynamic Environment Manager 10/2006 – 8/11/22
• Dynamic Environment Manager 10/2009 – 10/15/22
• App Volumes 4 2006 – 7/9/22
• App Volumes 4 2009 – 10/15/22
• App Volumes 2.18 – 9/16/22
• Identity Manager 3.3.4 – 8/4/22
• Identity Manager 3.3.5 – 11/20/22
• Workspace ONE UEM Console 2011 – 7/22/22
• Workspace ONE UEM Console 2101 (SaaS) – 7/22/22
• Workspace ONE UEM Console 2102 – 10/14/22
• vRealize Operations Manager for Horizon 6.7 – 10/15/22

Networking

• HCX 4.2 – 8/5/22

vRealize

• vRealize Automation 7.6 – 9/1/22
• vRealize Orchestrator 7.6 – 9/1/22
• vRealize Automation – 8/2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5 8.6, 8.6.1 – 10/31/22
•  vRealize Orchestrator – 8/2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5 8.6 – 10/31/22
• vRealize Orchestrator – 8.6.1 – 11/19/22
• vRealize Lifecycle Manager 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6 – 10/31/22
• vRealize Operations 8.1.1 – 7/9/22
• Log Insight 8.2, 8.3, 8.4 – 10/31/22
• Network Insight – 5.3, 6.0, 6.1 – 10/31/22
• vRealize Operations 8.1.1 – 7/9/22
• vRealize Operations 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5 – 10/31/22
• vRealize Operations for Horizon 6.7 – 10/15/22

Notes from the Field

VMUG Webcast
vSphere Virtual Volumes Managed Snapshot Deep Dive

• July 14th
• vSphere managed snapshots have historically been a core piece of integrations with many workflows that are widely used. However, with VMFS based VMs there are some performance penalties when keeping these snapshots or having multiple of them. vVols does not have those same performance limitations. Rather, vVols unlocks even more workflows that the end user can leverage with vVols and Managed Snapshots. During this presentation we will dive into how managed snapshots work with vVols, what value add there is, and have a demo of having some Databases on vVols and leverage managed snapshots to create point in time clones.
• Register

NSX Native load balancers will be end-of-life in the future – This is a good time to migrate to AVI Load Balancing.

vSAN Advisory
There are known issues that affect certain versions of vSAN in specific use cases.  If your environment uses vSAN,  please take a few minutes to read the following to understand if this affects your environment:

If you are running vSAN 6.7 P05 or vSAN 7.x prior to 7.0U3c – recommendation is to patch immediately to avoid rare issue which may lead to data availability issues on vSAN (KB 88815)

• vSAN 6.7 P05 – recommendation is to patch to 6.7 P06+
• vSAN 7.0 (prior to 7.0 U3c) – upgrade to 7.0 U3c+

vSAN Stretched Clusters running vSphere 7.0 U1 or U2 – objects may be reported as non-compliant with no rebuild (KB 88742)

vSAN 7.0 U1+ with “GuestUnmap” and “unmapFairness” enabled where performance issues are present.  Recommendation is to disable these features until the patch is released (KB 88832)

Booting ESX hosts from SD-Cards

On 4/27/22, VMware published updated guidance on using SD Cards. The short version is “VMware will continue supporting USB/SD card as a boot device through the 8.0 product release, including the update releases. Both installs and upgrades will be supported on USB/SD cards. The change from the previous guidance is that SD/USB as a standalone device will now be supported on previously certified server platforms”.  KB 85685 has the full details.  Migrating away from SD cards is still recommended.

• A TAM Customer webinar in December 2021 covered this extensively. If you were unable to attend the webinar live, you can watch the recording.
• A VMware engineer has written a blog article on how to move from booting ESX from SD-Cards to using locally attached  SSDs.
• 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 and later.  It involves a manual one-time config change which moves certain highly accessed files to a RAM Disk. vSphere 7.0 U3 automated this process.
• While this should help with vSphere 7.x, VMware guidance for future versions of vSphere is to move to higher performance/endurance boot devices in a future budget or your next hardware refresh plan.