VMware has announced that it will extend the support period for vSphere 6.7 for eleven months. Initially, the End of General Support (EoGS) date was set on November 15, 2021. The data has now been moved to October 15, 2022.
Paul Turner, VP Product Management, Cloud Platform Business Unit of VMware, explains in a blog post why the support period is being extended. He indicates that these are challenging times because of the coronavirus. Many customers contacted the company to share what impact the pandemic had on their business. In general, many customers said to have faced instability. Preparations for an upgrade to the newer vSphere 7.0 would therefore not be feasible at the current time.
VMware indicates that it is committed to producing high-quality products to meet customers’ needs in the long and short term. This also means listening to these customers, and for this reason, it has been decided to extend the support period of vSphere 6.7. Incidentally, the initial End of Technical Guidance (EoTG) date of 15 November 2023 would remain in place. The support periods for other vSphere products would also remain unchanged.
VMware vSphere 7.0
After the expiration of the vSphere 6.7 support period, users could switch to vSphere 7.0, as mentioned above. This version of the platform was released earlier this year and introduced important new updates. For example, users will be able to run modern containerised applications directly in vSphere. Security would also be increased, and new operational features would be introduced, such as workload-oriented Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS).
In addition to vSphere 7.0, customers can also opt for a range of lower-end solutions. Recently, at the Bank of America 2020 Global Technology Conference, VMware-CEO Pat Gelsinger announced that the company is working on new short term credit card-based solutions. VMWare hopes these lower-end capabilities will increase the adoption of its products.