VMware VSphere 6.0 End on 12th March 2020

VMware VSphere 6.0 Ending Soon, VSphere 6.5 and VSphere 6.7 For Further Course of Action

In the era where organizations are looking for options to get their data over the cloud and make things faster, better and proactive. Virtualizing their organization with VMware has proven to be the revolutionary movement that was taken up by various organizations. VMware is an extremely popular tool for organizations because it has the ability to it typically reduces the hardware cost by 40%, deploys the system provisioning within minutes, improves the disaster recovery that results in energy & cost saving and increases the productivity of the organization.

This is soc significant even in its market demand, researchers have claimed that VMware is one of the few tools that has valued more than $155 USD despite when the market had undergone a recession in between.

VMware has not become a great tool within a day, however, it has been consistent enough in delivering what it had along with the required set of updates on its offerings. Hence, ever since we've walked into this year the market has witnessed various transitions in the industry on various lines. VMware is another tangent of the industry which will be facing a transition.

VMware vSphere 6.0 end of life is coming very soon. There are various organizations that have moved from VMware vSphere 6.0 to 6.5 of 6.7, however, still, there are various organizations that are still using vSphere 6.0. Thus, VMware has officially announced that by 12th March vSphere 6.0 will come to an end. This has made professionals curious about what is it that will happen next now? This is something can even be seen amongst professionals who are either working on VMware vSphere 6.0 or for that matter are just thinking about taking up a VMware Certification.

What does vSphere 6.0 end of life imply?

Organizations which are still using VMware vSphere 6.0 must seriously think about now using this version since it will be making a huge transition in your operations. Organizations that are still stubborn about using vSphere 6.0 must know that one of the most important things about using VMware for the organization is the kind of support organizations receive from the VMware will come to an end in case if you are using a vSphere 6.0. And Organizations which are in the process of production cannot afford to lose out on the level of support especially while you are busy looking for help on unsupported products. Since ​VMware Support policy​ can vary because of the chosen plan. vSphere 6.0 has reached its life, and when it will not be anymore supported by VMware which means this will end support for lifetime for certain products within vSphere 6.0. VMware vSphere 6.0 users would know that this is either End of General Support or end of Technical Guidance.

Technical Guidance People are often found assuming technical guidance to be something else. Technical Guidance does not mean that products become unsupported instantly. VMware will still be supporting you while you are trying to resolve an issue for operating these products. However, there will always be some serious limitations to how far can this go?, since this is outside of the General Support.

Which means most of the time these products' cases would demand an update/ upgrade.

Technical Guidance will be made available to you using the self-help portal however telephonic conversation will not be made available. Users may even open a support request online to receive support and workaround for low-severity issues on supported configurations only.

During this phase VMware does not offer new hardware support, server/client/guest OS updates, new security patches or bug fixes unless otherwise noted. This instead for the usage by the customers operating in stable environments with systems operating under reasonably stable loads.

Organizations using ​vSphere 6.0 must note ​that ‘Technical Guidance will be made available to you only 12th March 2020’ for more information check out the ​VMware Lifecycle Support Phases​.

What can be done about this?

Given the in hand circumstances where vSphere 6.0 is getting discontinued for life, organizations still using this version should move to vSphere 6.5 or vSphere 6.7, and you will

have proper support from VMware and you don't more to worry about production impacting scenario with vSphere 6.0 in the later stage of your business. vSphere 6.5 or vSphere 6.7?

Keeping the above-stated factors in mind, this is one of the most important point organizations would be concerned about since this a point where you have to think about upgrades/ updates or other factors. This is because the latest release of vSphere comprises of many new features and enhancements which are great to have for the VMware Infrastructures. To compare the two of them you must consider the hardware and compatibility for the same

Compatible with the Hardware It is imperative and mandatory at the same time that you have checked neither the servers nor storage is not connected with the latest version of vSphere so that you can use the latest version vSphere at ease and are not worried about getting new hardware for it. Thus you can take factors like these into account:1. Physical server you are planning to upgrade on. Also, you must know which is this vSphere is supported on which hardware.

2. Underlying Storage and application such as SQL failover cluster support with vSphere version.

Software Interoperability Organizations which were using VMware vSphere 6.0 solutions were also having to interoperate with vSphere or third-party software solutions. This was integrated into their system with the current vSphere 6.0 environment this typically can be seen while, monitoring and backing up solution or any other VMware solutions.

You can refer to the support matrix from a VMware perspective in the ​VMware Product Interoperability Matrices​ to resolve your further possible queries.

Introduction of VMware vSphere 6.5 & vSphere 6.7 Introduction of VMware vSphere 6.5 vSphere 6.5 accelerates the customer transition for the digital transformation. vSphere 6.5 has elevated the customer experience to a new level where it aims at providing an exceptional management simplicity, operational efficiency and faster time to market.

Simplified Experiences vSphere 6.5 makes the ​vCenter Server Appliance the fundamental building block of a vSphere environment. The core of the vSphere is built with the intentions to ease out the deployment and management approach in a way that it reduces the operational complexity by amending key functionality in a single location. Capabilities like vSphere host management (are completely integrated with the ​vSphere Update Manager​), ​file-based backup and recovery, native VCSA high availability​, and much more are now embedded in this one-stop appliance model.

This entirely has made the users more efficient since there is no need to interface with multiple components. Furthermore, since everything in vSphere6.5 is centralised where the vCenter Server Appliance has the ability to generate a huge amount of optimization and innovation. This also includes an over with twice increase in the scalability and three times scalability in the performance​. Upgrading to this, building block will get easier than it was in vSphere 6.0 since users will now be able to convert from their traditional windows deployment into the new appliance model using the new vCenter ​Server Appliance Migration tool​.

vCenter Server Appliance: The fundamental building block of a vSphere environment vSphere 6.5 operates on an API-first approach to foster a more business-centric and highly agile environment. vSphere 6.5 has introduced ​REST-based APIs for VM Management which to a great extent improves the user and partner experience. by enabling finer control of virtual infrastructure for apps. This also has added a new layer in the infrastructure in a way that one can do with a line of codes and the simplified APIs will take care of the rest.

vSphere 6.5 further has HTML5-based vSphere Client that has facilitated graphical users with a better experience which has provided the modern users with Fling on VMware Labs, and an overwhelming positive vibe.

HTML5-based vSphere Client: GUI that enables fast performance and cross-platform compatibility Comprehensive Built-in Security vSpeher 6.5 offers a new ​VM-level disk encryption capability that is designed to protect the organizations from unauthorized data access. VMware's approach is universal as well as scalable and has the ability to encrypt any VM disk even if there are any guest OS along with the ability to use scalable and familiar vSphere storage policy framework. This is combined with encrypted vMotion​ capability that the vSpeher can safeguard data at-rest and data in-motion. vSphere 6.5 also adds a secure boot model which protects both the hypervisor and the guest operating system. This basically helps in preventing the images from getting tampered along with restricting loading the unauthorised components. vSphere 6.5 further delivers enhanced audit-quality logging capabilities thi also gives the forensic information about the actions of the users. vSphere 6.5 acts as the core for securing the SDDC and works effortlessly with other SDDC products to provide a complete security model for infrastructure.

Comprehensive Built-in Security: Secure Data, Secure Infrastructure, and Secure Access Universal App Platform vSphere is a universal app platform supporting traditional and next-generation applications despite when both these categories are class apart, however, both are helpless without the infrastructure to scale up their performance and availability that is imperative for meeting their key business objectives.

For running the apps vSphere 6.5 expands its workloads coverage model by focusing on two parameters of scale-up and scale-out next-gen apps which are built with the help of evolving technology building blocks like containers. vSphere 6.5 VMware delivers vSphere Integrated Containers, has been the easiest way to allow users in bringing containers into an existing vSphere environment. vSphere Integrated Containers further offers the best both ends that acts flawlessly for developers and vSphere operations teams.

VMware vSphere Integrated Containers allows customers in transforming their businesses with containers without changing their existing infrastructure. It consists of 3 components 1. Engine providing the core container with a run time 2. Harbor i.e. an enterprise registry in the container images 3. Admiral i.e. a portal for container management by the dev teams

vSphere Integrated Containers Teams in providing a docker compatible interface to their app teams, running on the existing infrastructure.

vSphere 6.5 also allows in running the application from any cloud that comprises of the data center or in the public cloud environment. vSphere 6.5 further acts as the foundation of VMware's cloud strategy and also is in the heart of the Software-Defined Data Center. vSphere 6.5 as an ideal platform for cloud, businesses and apps also reinforces the customers' investment in VMware which make it one of the core components of VMware's SDDC and a fundamental building block for VMware's cloud strategy.

Introduction of VMware vSphere 6.7 vSphere 6.7 is an efficient and secure platform for hybrid clouds that fuels digital transformation by delivering simple and efficient management at scale, comprehensive built-in security. It equips IT organizations address with the following trends that are on high demand in the IT Infrastructure: 1. Extreme growth in variety and quantity of applications this includes right form business-critical apps to new intelligent workloads 2. Quick growth of the hybrid cloud environments along with the cases used 3. On-premises data centres expanding and growing on a global extent along with the Edge 4. Security of the infrastructure and applications paramount importance .

vSphere 6.7 builds on the technological innovation that is delivered by vSphere 6.5. vSphere 6.7 elevates the customer experience to an entirely new level and provides a flawless management simplicity, operational efficiency and faster time to market, all at scale. vSphere 6.7 has an enhanced vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) that introduces several APIs which technology improves the efficiency and experience while deploying multiple vCenters depending upon the template, making the management of the vCenter server appliance significantly easier also for backup and restore. ​vCenter with embedded platform services controller in enhanced linked mode significantly simplifies the vCenter and has seamless visibility across the environment without requiring the need for a load balance or an external platform services controller.

Furthermore, vSphere 6.7 vCSA delivers phenomenal ​performance improvements (all metrics compared at cluster scale limits, versus vSphere 6.5): ● Two times faster performance in the vCenter operation each second ● Three times reduction in the usage of the memory ● Three times faster DRS-relayed operations The changes in vSphere 6.7 are the reason why users can now find vSphere to be faster, deliverable and of significant value, & cost saving for a variety of use case like the VDI, Scale-out apps, Big Data, HPC, DevOps distributed cloud-native apps, etc. vSphere 6.7 improves efficiency at scale when updating ESXi hosts, ​this significantly reduces the maintenance time by deleting one of the two reboots normally that is required for major version upgrades(​Single Reboot​). Furthermore, the ​vSphere Quick Boot is a new innovation having the ability to restart the ESXi hypervisor without rebooting the physical host this also skips the time-consuming hardware initializations.

Another key element that allows vSphere 6.7 to deliver a simplified and efficient experience is the graphical user interface itself. The ​HTML5-based vSphere Client facilitates the modern users with the interface experience that is both responsive and easy to use. vSphere 6.7 consists of added functionalities that not only supports a typical workflow but also caters to the customer need like managing the NSX, vSAN, VUM. Comprehensive Built-In Security vSphere 6.7 builds on the security capabilities in vSphere 6.5 that authorizes its unique position because the hypervisor offers the comprehensive security which initiates in the core using an operationally simple policy-driven model. vSphere 6.7 supports the ​Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 hardware devices while introducing ​Virtual TPM 2.0​. This significantly enhances protecting and assuring integrity for hypervisor and guest operating system. This prevents the Virtual Machines (VMs) and hosts from being tampered with and prevents the loading of the unauthorized component that enables guest operating system security features.

Data encryption was introduced with vSphere 6.5, where vSphere 6.7 the VM Encryption is further enhanced and furthermore simple to operate and manage. vSphere 6.7 simplifies workflows for ​VM Encryption which is designed to protect the data then be that at rest or in motion. This has made this as easy as a right-click while also increasing the security posture of encryptions that enables the users with a stronger grip to control and protect the actions against the unauthorised data access. vSphere 6.7 also enhances protection of the data that is being circulated within the organization at present. This is done with ease because of the ​encrypted vMotion across different vCenter instances that has made it easy to secure the data centre in between a migration. Thi even has helped in moving the data across hybrid cloud environment (between on-premises and public cloud), or across geographically distributed data centers.

vSphere6.7 has introduced the ​Virtualization Based Securit​y technologies that results in close collaboration between VMware and Microsoft ensuring that Microsoft VMs will now be able to support the in-guest security features while continuing to run performant and secure on the vSphere platform. vSphere6.7 delivers comprehensive built-in security and is the heart of secure SDDC. It also has a deeply integration with other VMware products that enables them in working seamlessly with these other products. like NSX, vSAN and vRealise Suite that provides a complete security model for the data center.

Universal Application Platform

vSphere 6.7 as a universal application platform supports new workload along with the current mission-critical applications. It further supports and authorizes some of the latest hardware innovation in the industry in delivering the exceptional performance for various workloads. [​vmware training​ ] vSphere 6.7 also enhances the support and capabilities that are introduced for GPUs through VMware's collaboration with the Nvidia. All thanks to Nvidia GRID™ vGPU technology enhancements in vSphere 6.7, instead of getting a power cut customers have given the ability to suspend and resume the VMs according to the need of the hour. This helps in enhancing the lifecycle management of underlying the host and significantly reduces the disruption for the end-user in the latter stages.