What's New in vSphere 8 Update 3: A Comprehensive Overview

VMware's vSphere 8 Update 3 brings significant enhancements and new features, providing improved performance, flexibility, and security.

Key Updates

vSphere Live Patch

vSphere Live Patch in Update 3 allows critical bug fixes without needing to reboot or evacuate hosts. This ensures minimal disruption as virtual machines undergo fast-suspend-resume (FSR) during patching. However, VMs with vSphere Fault Tolerance or using Direct Path I/O must be manually remediated.

Partial Maintenance Mode

This new state allows existing VMs to continue running while disallowing the creation or migration of new VMs during vSphere Live Patch remediation tasks.

Enhanced Image Customization

vSphere Lifecycle Manager now supports more granular customization of images, including the removal of non-essential components and retaining specific driver versions, optimizing for remote and edge use cases.

Dual DPU Support

vSphere 8 Update 3 introduces support for dual DPU configurations, enhancing high availability and network offload capacity by allowing two independent DPUs to be attached to separate vSphere Distributed Switches.

vCenter Reduced Downtime Update

The new update reduces service downtime during vCenter updates, supporting various deployment topologies and enabling automatic or manual switchover phases.

Hardware and Performance Enhancements

Intel Xeon CPU Max Series Support

Update 3 supports Intel Xeon CPU Max Series, accelerating AI/ML workloads and high-performance computing (HPC) applications with high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and on-chip accelerators.

vGPU Profiles and Cluster Level Monitoring

The update introduces flexible vGPU profiles, allowing different profile types on the same GPU. It also adds cluster-level GPU monitoring for better resource management and performance overview.

Availability and Resilience

Embedded vSphere Cluster Service

The rearchitected vSphere Cluster Service now uses fewer resources and eliminates storage footprint, running entirely in host memory and simplifying deployment and management.

vSphere Fault Tolerance Metro Cluster Support

Update 3 supports metro clusters with vSphere Fault Tolerance, ensuring high availability across sites. If a site fails, affected VMs continue running without FT protection until recovery.

Workloads and Efficiency

CPU C-State Virtualization

vSphere 8 Update 3 allows virtualization and management of physical CPU C-States, enhancing energy efficiency for Telco and VRAN infrastructures by enabling power-saving modes.

Customizable Virtual Hardware

OVF/OVA templates from the content library can now have their hardware customized during deployment, streamlining the process and ensuring desired configurations.

Virtual Machine Disabled Operations

Administrators can now easily reactivate vSphere operations that were disabled during third-party tasks, ensuring smooth operations and task completion.

Security and Compliance

PingFederate Support

vSphere now supports PingFederate as an external identity provider, enhancing flexibility and modern authentication methods alongside Entra ID, Okta, and ADFS.

TLS & Cipher Suite Profile Support

The update introduces profile-based configuration for TLS and cipher suites, simplifying compliance and security configurations through API or PowerCLI scripts.

Updated Security Configuration Guides

The Security Configuration Guide for vSphere 8 Update 3 includes new features and scripts for auditing and remediation, helping users meet compliance requirements efficiently.

Planning and Migration

Upgrade Planning

With vSphere 7's end-of-general-support approaching in April 2025, it's crucial to plan upgrades or migrations to vSphere 8. Utilize the vSphere 8 upgrade activity path and best practices for a smooth transition.

Deprecations and Removals

Update 3 announces the deprecation of vSphere Trust Authority and certain features related to Storage DRS and IO Control. These features will not be supported in future major versions, making it essential to adapt to these changes.

Conclusion

vSphere 8 Update 3 brings a wealth of improvements across various domains, enhancing performance, security, and usability. By leveraging these updates, organizations can ensure their virtual infrastructure remains robust, efficient, and future-proof.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. Stay tuned for more 8.0.3 coverage.!-->

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I read through the What's New post on the VMware Blog yesterday and saw a lot of these. Thank you for sharing @andy.sturniolo

Patched my homelab yesterday with this and the updated NIC Fling. Went well but be advised when using Veeam that you will get a warning about API version not supported due to the changes in U3.

I am sure 12.2 will support this hopefully. Now to power my lab back on after the power failure.

Veeam has not officially announced support for 8.0.3 as of yet. So keep that in mind. Labs are fine, but i would wait a bit for production. Considering ESXi is still IA, even though vCenter has gone GA.

Yes I always do my homelab first and production at our office is not controlled by me anyway.

I like to see what is new and how Veeam reacts when new versions come out so I can be prepared.

I’d be hesitant to upgrade to a major-ish revision in production anyway. I’ve already seen reports for a few bugs and upgrade issues, but nothing super unexpected for the early adopters.

https://www.reddit.com/r/vmware/comments/1dozquy/vcenter_803_bugs_thread/

https://www.reddit.com/r/vmware/comments/1dpoyie/80_u3_upgrade_issue/

Also was just reading…the VCSA 8 U3 is GA, but ESXI is not yet GA and is in more of a beta cycle (IA - Initial Availability) for those who want to test. Not sure that everyone is catching that the VCSA is GA but ESXI is not.