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I’ve just seen VMware has announced a revision to their expected release date of vSphere & vSAN 8, and for the right reasons!

 

The VMware vSphere 7.0 Legacy

 

I won’t go on a bashing spree of VMware vSphere 7 release, but… it wasn’t good. The highlights of which include aggressive wear & tear, and subsequent killing of, SD cards and lower durability storage. Additionally, VMware had to temporarily pull some v7 U3 releases due to Quality Assurance (QA) issues.

With the issues mentioned above being part of the story of the infamous v7 release history, I felt positive when my RSS reader pulled eUPDATE: Link has been pulled by VMware] this article [/update] from VMware this morning. In summary, General Availability (GA) of vSphere & vSAN 8.0 have both been pushed to the 11th October 2022, with VMware specifically calling out addition time wanted for QA. dUPDATE] As this link has been pulled, I can't confirm if this is still VMware's proposed date, or if it was a placeholder. [/update]

 

What’s new in vSphere / vSAN 8?

 

Want to learn more about vSphere 8? Check out VMware’s ‘What’s New’ article here. More interested in vSAN 8? Don’t worry, there’s a ‘What’s New’ for that too!

 

I’m still on vSphere / vSAN 6.x

 

On a vSphere 6.x release still? Remember, as I discussed in my blog post last year, vSphere 6.5 & 6.7 support will meet its ‘End of General Support’ milestone in under a month! On the 15th October. Check out my blog post here for all information related to the exact end of life for these products, and an overview of the VMware support lifecycle. And if you're on 6.0 or older, you're already past the End of Technical Guidance phase.

 

How do I prepare for vSphere / vSAN 8.0?

 

As eager as you might be to deploy vSphere 8.0 in production on day one, please ensure that your supporting infrastructure and applications all support running on vSphere 8.0. This includes (but is not limited to):

  • Server & Installed Hardware
  • Storage Systems
  • Guest Operating Systems
  • Managed Virtual Appliances
  • Data Protection Solutions

For VMware’s compatibility matrix, you can search for Server, Component, Storage/SAN, Guest OS compatibility and more here.

For a Data Protection Solution such as Veeam Backup & Replication, you can find their support KB article here. Remember, most vendors won’t explicitly state support until 90-180 days after vSphere 8.0 goes GA, but it will completely depend on the vendor, especially for managed virtual appliances.

If you are in doubt as to your platform’s compatibility with vSphere 8.0, you should seek to gain feedback from your hardware/software manufacturers, and then plan your upgrade accordingly.

 

Click here to see the full VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix.

Glad they did this as it is better to release a more stable product so they don't have to patch right away.  Looking forward to this release for the new vSAN on my NUCs. 😎

I won’t go on a bashing spree of VMware vSphere 7 release, but… it wasn’t good.

 

I will.  It was horrible! 

And it was happy to eat SD card’s alive if you didn’t have it redirecting the scratch to “persistent” disks.  As far as I can tell, there was basically no warning on that, and it was unstable to say the least.  Thank goodness U3c (?) got things back on track, but it did cause me to be a lot more cautious about new VMware releases which, honestly, since security updates should generally be applied promptly, is a shame.  Glad they got things back on track!

I agree.  I believe @Rick Vanover mentioned something about it a couple months ago as VMware was fully divested from Dell that they were starting to follow a more sane release schedule that was going to allow for better QA and a more stable product release.  I’m hopeful for what future versions hold.

I’ll put it here as FAQ #1.. When will Veeam support vSphere 8? -» After it goes generally available (VMware side) we test again on the GA vSphere and then the next (Veeam) release vehicle will make the cut if it is passes based on what we see.

I’ll put it here as FAQ #1.. When will Veeam support vSphere 8? -» After it GA’s we test again on the GA vSphere and then the next release vehicle will make the cut if it is passes based on what we see.

Hey, you know the first question of my VMware admins….

I'm not putting to much interest in vSphere 8 before U1 gets released. Afterwards we can decide whether it's stable enough.

@dlosekeWell their independence didn't last long and soon they'll probably be part of Broadcom. So hopefully they won't cut down QA (even more) and try to squeeze more out of less 😬

 

@dlosekeWell their independence didn't last long and soon they'll probably be part of Broadcom. So hopefully they won't cut down QA (even more) and try to squeeze more out of less 😬

 

I think the general consensus is that VMware doesn't know how to operate without some sort of overlord/sugardaddy running the show/investing in them.  We’ll see what happens with the Broadcom chapter of their story…..

Morning all! Here’s an unexpected development to the story.

 

VMware are changing their release vehicle. Which might explain the ‘delay’ in the release of vSphere & vSAN 8.

 

VMware are now going to implement an “Initial Availability” release, prior to ‘General Availability’.

So, what does this mean? When VMware complete all of the testing & assurance that qualified the release as ‘General Availability’ , this will now be called ‘Initial Availability’. Only after positive deployment experience is experienced by customers, will VMware then promote a release to ‘General Availability’.

What does everyone think about this? On the one hand, it’s great that VMware are taking additional steps for providing assurances to their customers, on the other hand, they haven’t actually changed their Quality Assurance process to release their binaries, just labelled them less confidently…

 

For full reading of the announcement, check out their blog post: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2022/10/new-release-model-for-vsphere-8.html

Morning all! Here’s an unexpected development to the story.

 

VMware are changing their release vehicle. Which might explain the ‘delay’ in the release of vSphere & vSAN 8.

 

VMware are now going to implement an “Initial Availability” release, prior to ‘General Availability’.

So, what does this mean? When VMware complete all of the testing & assurance that qualified the release as ‘General Availability’ , this will now be called ‘Initial Availability’. Only after positive deployment experience is experienced by customers, will VMware then promote a release to ‘General Availability’.

What does everyone think about this? On the one hand, it’s great that VMware are taking additional steps for providing assurances to their customers, on the other hand, they haven’t actually changed their Quality Assurance process to release their binaries, just labelled them less confidently…

 

For full reading of the announcement, check out their blog post: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2022/10/new-release-model-for-vsphere-8.html

I think this is a much better way to release just depends on the audience that gets the Initial release to test and how it goes. We will see what happens as I am looking forward to getting the bits to test especially VSAN 8. 😎

I just wonder if their new “Native Data Protection” API’s will allow for Veeam Storage Integration with snapshots down the road. If it does, this would be huge for us.

vSphere 8 (Inc vCenrer & vSAN) is live!

vSphere 8 (Inc vCenrer & vSAN) is live!

Yep downloaded and ready test.

I’ll be rocking 7.3 in PROD for some time yet.   It always blows my mind people who put there production on the  latest and greatest before a few of the bugs are fixed. On the other side, the people still using 5, 6.0 etc.   That makes more sense to me if you are understaffed, but yikes!!!!

 

7.0 had it’s issues, but I've been moving my scratch vols for years so it didn’t hurt me too bad. 7.2 had a few quirks as well.  7.3 is finally working good, even though I wasn’t a fan of the GUI change 🙂 lol

 

The added features in 8.0 will be great to try in a lab, but I’d rather not beta test it on our production systems. 

Yep, I have a client that just installed a replacement host to their old 5.5 host at one of their locations.  I’ve had a couple that we onboarded that were running 5.0.  Amazing…...but we’ll fix that up.

That said….wonder if I can run 8 on my home server….it’s a R520 so maybe?

It most likely will with a bunch of warnings when you Install it. I have got 7.3 on some servers that REALLY shouldn’t have supported it 😂

 

As long as you don’t go way too far back where drives become an issue there is some wiggle room for home labs. 

It most likely will with a bunch of warnings when you Install it. I have got 7.3 on some servers that REALLY shouldn’t have supported it 😂

 

As long as you don’t go way too far back where drives become an issue there is some wiggle room for home labs. 

Yeah, I’m running 7 on my R520, and I think I got 6.7 on my R610’s.  I don’t think I was able to get 7 on the R610’s.  7 deprecated some older drivers such as for the RAID cards and such, so aside for side-loading some MIB’s, you’re kinda stuck at that point.

 

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