Author: MarkGabbs

vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 – End of General Support
It’s the last time I’m posting this….
vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 End Of General Support ended October 15, 2022
We are all at vSphere 7, right?
….& vSphere 8 was just recently announced & should be available next week…
can upgrade from 6.7 or 7.0….
VMware End of Support pages are here.
Don’t forget that SD cards are no longer recommended by VMware!
That means you need SSD or NVMe for boot drives now!

vSphere 8 Released!
Cool. on schedule, October 11, 2022.
Done all the documentation around upgrades from vSphere 7.0 & vSphere 6.7 (the only supported upgrades).
Done all the documentation around new deployments & upgrades (all went well with multiple upgrades and new deployments).
Looking good.
Still need all the other upstream/downstream dependencies in line before doing any of my prod environments.
Can manage ESXi 6.7, 7.0, and 8.0 hosts.
Now…off to read the 3,585 pages of documentation for vSphere 8.0.
vSphere 8.0 Release Notes are here.
vSAN 8.0 Release Notes are here.
vSphere with Tanzu 8.0 Release notes are here.

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2022-10-17”

vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 – End of General Support
Why do I keep posting this?
I do not want anyone to be surprised….
Don’t forget that vSphere 6 is phasing out, and that most people should be moving to vSphere 7.
Customer buying new hardware, & asking for ESXi 6.5 installs are being met with surprises, as the hardware doesn’t support ESXi 6.5…..forcing the upgrade path.
So far, vSphere 7.0.3 Update 3f (July release) seems to be very stable.
vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 End Of General Support ends October 15, 2022
This only leaves 1.5 weeks to get to vSphere 7.
….& vSphere 8 was just recently announced & should be available next week…
VMware End of Support pages are here.
Don’t forget that SD cards are no longer recommended by VMware!
That means you need SSD or NVMe for boot drives now!

vSphere 8 release date – October 11 ??
VMware Blog post is here (short & sweet)….pulled the moment I linked to it…..
…did they release the post a few days early?….
Already booked a few days to read the documentation, & inject the content into the WEI vSphere Workshops!!!
Will take an extra few days to validate our upgrade documentation, as well as the new deploy documentation. We’ll be able to teach probably 2 weeks afterwards, barring any major issues.
….meaning all things I’ve discovered (below) might not make GA, but we’ll see.

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2022-10-03”

vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 – End of General Support
Why do I keep posting this?
I do not want anyone to be surprised….
Don’t forget that vSphere 6 is phasing out, and that most people should be moving to vSphere 7.
Customer buying new hardware, & asking for ESXi 6.5 installs are being met with surprises, as the hardware doesn’t support ESXi 6.5…..forcing the upgrade path.
So far, vSphere 7.0.3 Update 3f (July release) seems to be very stable.
vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 End Of General Support ends October 15, 2022
This only leaves 4 weeks to get to vSphere 7.
….and vSphere 8 was just announced…
VMware End of Support pages are here.
Don’t forget that SD cards are no longer recommended by VMware!
That means you need SSD or NVMe for boot drives now!

vSphere 8 to deprecate older CPUs.
Which Intel & AMD will not be supported with vSphere 8?
Please check your hardware, and plan accordingly to keep those systems running the supported versions of ESXi.
William Lam’s post on this is here.
Also covers some of the requirements for vCenter & ESXi 8.

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2022-09-19”

vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 – End of General Support
Why do I keep posting this?
I do not want anyone to be surprised….
Don’t forget that vSphere 6 is phasing out, and that most people should be moving to vSphere 7.
Customer buying new hardware, & asking for ESXi 6.5 installs are being met with surprises, as the hardware doesn’t support ESXi 6.5…..forcing the upgrade path.
So far, vSphere 7.0.3 Update 3f (July release) seems to be very stable.
vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 End Of General Support ends October 15, 2022
This only leaves 6 weeks to get to vSphere 7.
….and vSphere 8 was just announced…
VMware End of Support pages are here.
Don’t forget that SD cards are no longer recommended by VMware!
That means you need SSD or NVMe for boot drives now!

VMware Explore 2022
…
You can now visit the VMware Explore landing page, and get access to all the content (with a VMware login)….keynotes, sessions,
As of 9/2, 410 out of 458 sessions have been posted online.
William Lam has already published his GitHub page making searching a bit easier.
vBrownbag has all the VMTN Community Talks on its YouTube Channel.

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2022-09-05”

Short Update – mostly duplicates…
While its been a busy news week, its mostly been
“announcement coming soon”
I assume after VMworld we’ll have quite a few posts in here.

vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 – End of General Support
Why do I keep posting this?
I do not want anyone to be surprised….
Don’t forget that vSphere 6 is phasing out, and that most people should be moving to vSphere 7.
Customer buying new hardware, & asking for ESXi 6.5 installs are being met with surprises, as the hardware doesn’t support ESXi 6.5…..forcing the upgrade path.
So far, vSphere 7.0.3 Update 3f (July release) seems to be very stable.
vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 End Of General Support ends October 15, 2022
This only leaves just over 2 months to get to vSphere 7.
VMware End of Support pages are here.
Don’t forget that SD cards are no longer recommended by VMware!
That means you need SSD or NVMe for boot drives now!

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2022-08-22”

vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 – End of General Support
Why do I keep posting this?
I do not want anyone to be surprised….
Don’t forget that vSphere 6 is phasing out, and that most people should be moving to vSphere 7.
Customer buying new hardware, & asking for ESXi 6.5 installs are being met with surprises, as the hardware doesn’t support ESXi 6.5…..forcing the upgrade path.
So far, vSphere 7.0.3 Update 3f (July release) seems to be very stable.
vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 End Of General Support ends October 15, 2022
This only leaves just over 2 months to get to vSphere 7.
VMware End of Support pages are here.
Don’t forget that SD cards are no longer recommended by VMware!
That means you need SSD or NVMe for boot drives now!

vSphere+ and vSAN+ licensing nuances
Well, core based licensing is here.
In short, you must license each core.
Each CPU must be licensed for minimum of 16 cores, regardless of the actual core count….
That might be an unwelcome change for those of us running 8-Core CPUs for software licensing controls….
VMware KB 89116 covers it.

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2022-08-08”

vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 – End of General Support
Why do I keep posting this?
I do not want anyone to be surprised….
Don’t forget that vSphere 6 is phasing out, and that most people should be moving to vSphere 7.
Customer buying new hardware, & asking for ESXi 6.5 installs are being met with surprises, as the hardware doesn’t support ESXi 6.5…..forcing the upgrade path.
So far, vSphere 7.0.3 Update 3e (May release) seems to be very stable.
Just did a class with 7.0 Update 3f (July release) and had no issues.
….and just upgraded to 7.0 Update 3g (still no issues yet).
vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 End Of General Support ends October 15, 2022
This only leaves just about 2 months to get to vSphere 7.
VMware End of Support pages are here.
Don’t forget that SD cards are no longer recommended by VMware!
That means you need SSD or NVMe for boot drives now!

VMware Explore
VMworld was rebranded as VMware Explore…
If you are registered, you now have access to the Schedule Builder, which went live on July 19.
Go the event portal, and click on Session Builder!
If you’ve ever been, you know that sessions fill up fast, so get to building your schedule! Many sessions are already full (at 10:09am July 19th).

Continue reading “Virtual Updates 2022-07-25”