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vSphere 6.5 & vSphere 6.7 End of Support on October 15 2022

vSphere 6.5 & vSphere 6.7 End of Support on October 15 2022

VMware has already announced the latest version of vSphere 7.0 in April 2020 & the upcoming version which is vSphere 8.0 will also be generally available soon. So older versions of vSphere 6.5 & vSphere 6.7 will be going for End Support on October 15th, 2022. So it is recommended that you must upgrade your infrastructure as soon as possible if you are running on these older versions.

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VMware released vSphere 6.5 on November 2016 & vSphere 6.7 on April 2018 so it is now more than 4 years for both of these versions & hence it will be going to end support in the next month. In that case, if you face any problems you won’t be eligible for the support but instead, you can get just Technical guidance for the same.

Many customers in the industry still use the older versions of vSphere so it is a kind of reminder for you to go ahead & upgrade your infrastructure if you have not done it. Newer versions of vSphere add many features and functionalities to your existing infrastructure. Which improves the overall performance of your IT infrastructure & makes it more reliable & efficient.

Below you can see some of the key features of vSphere 7.0:

  • vSphere with Kubernetes
  • vSphere HTML5 Client
  • vSphere Lifecycle Manager
  • VM Template Versioning and the Content Library
  • Improved Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)
  • Assignable Hardware
  • Intrinsic Security
  • vCenter Server Profiles
  • VMware Virtual Hardware 17
  • Refactored vMotion

And Many more.

Above we just highlighted key features of vSphere 7.0 So if you are not using the latest version of vSphere you are missing all these new features & functionalities. Which makes day to day IT operations easy & smooth.

Below you can see the complete details of Support for vSphere 6.5 & vSphere 6.7:

ESXi-EOS-2022

vCenter-EOS-2022

Above details are taken from VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix. If you also want to check out for your products than check link at the end of this post.

Below some more detailed information on How End of Support works & How it covered. So if you have any doubts it will be cleared.

For vSphere ESXi 6.7:

ESXi-EOS-1-2022
Image credit: VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix

For vCenter Server 6.7:

vCenter-EOS-1-2022
Image credit: VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix

So It is mandatory now for you to plan your vSphere Upgrades so that you have vSphere 7 running in your environment with all the latest features. And if you are facing any difficulties in your environment such as PSOD, Crash events etc so that you can easily contact VMware Support Team.

What is Technical Guidance:

Technical Guidance for vSphere 6.5 and vSphere 6.7 is available until November 15, 2023 primarily through the self-help portal. During the Technical Guidance phase, VMware does not offer new hardware support, server/client/guest OS updates, new security patches or bug fixes unless otherwise noted.

VMware Compatibility Guide:

Before going for upgrade it is always mandatory to check the compatibility of your current Hardware & Software. So you can checkout below official link to check on Compatibility:

VMware Compatibility Guide

Using above link you can checkout your current Hardware version support for ESXi hosts, features supported with respective versions. So that after checking compatibility you can easily plan for vSphere ESXi Upgrade.

 

VMware Upgrade Path:

VMware Upgrade path helps you to understand which upgrade path is supported & which are not. So that if you are running version such as 6.5 so whether you can directly upgrade to 7.0 or not. So it helps you to plan your vSphere upgrade in perfect order. If you want you can easily check it on VMware Portals but for your comfort we are providing you below upgrade paths for vSphere ESXi & vCenter Server.

Upgrade Path for ESXi:

esxi-upgrade-path-1
Image Credit: VMware Portal

Upgrade Path for vCenter Server:

vcenter-upgrade-path-1
Image Credit: VMware Portal

Last we have upgrade sequence for vSphere so that you can plan your upgrade in the perfect order. Below is the image taken from VMware documentation. It will help you to understand which product to upgrade first & which product to upgrade later.

vsphere-upgrade-sequence-1

 

So now most of the things will be clear for you related to vSphere upgrades. You can checkout our below links which will help you in upgrading your vSphere Infrastructure step by step. So that if you are not aware about how upgrade works you can check our posts on the same.

Before starting upgrade make sure that you have proper backups in place of your vSphere Infrastructure & everything is running healthy without any failures so that you can perform easy upgrades.

If you still not upgraded to vSphere 7.0 than you can checkout our below links for the same:

Note: vSphere ESXi installation is same so we are giving you ESXi 6.7 Installation link.

How to Install vSphere ESXi 6.7 Step by Step ?

How to Install vCenter Server 7.0 Step by Step ?

Below are some of other posts which will also help you to migrate to vSphere 7:

How to Migrate Windows vCenter Server 6.5 to VCSA 7 Step by Step ?

How to upgrade vCenter Server 6.5 to vCenter Server 7 Step by Step

Below are some of the posts on Patching of ESXi & vCenter Server:

How to Patch vCenter Server 7 Step by Step ?

How to Patch ESXi 7 Using Command Line ?

How to Patch ESXi 7 Using Lifecycle Manager ?

Below is the link to check VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix:

VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix

 

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https://lifecycle.vmware.com/#/

Mayur Parmar

Hi I am Mayur Parmar. Independent Author & Founder of Mastering VMware. I am working in IT industry for more than 4 Years with knowledge of VMware , Microsoft Server's, Linux Server's.

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