VMware has announced that it is extending support for version 6.5 of vSphere by one year. In doing so, offers its customers more stability in the turmoil caused by the corona pandemic.
The support extension was announced in a blog post. In it, VMware talks about the year that has passed since the Covid-19 pandemic caused lockdowns in most countries and many companies to suddenly switch to working from home. This has created challenges and uncertainty for VMware’s customers. Therefore, the company has decided to extend support for the old version of VMware.
Support until November 2022
Initially, the end of general support for vSphere 6.5 was set for 15 November 2021. This has now been pushed back to October 15, 2022. The end of technical support remains unchanged on November 15, 2023. Support for vSAN 6.5 and 6.6 has also been extended. General support for these has been moved to October 15, 2022, as well.
Flash client
The fact that it is possible to use the obsolete version for another year does not mean that it is a good idea. The client of vSphere 6.5 still uses Adobe Flash, a program whose support expired at the beginning of this year. As a result, software that requires Flash no longer works in all major browsers. If you still want to use vSphere 6.5, you must continue to use an older version of an internet browser, with all the associated security risks. With version 6.7 VMware has switched to a client based on HTML5.
Support for vSphere 6.7 also extended
This is not the first time VMware has extended support for its software due to the corona pandemic. Last June, the company announced that vSphere 6.7 would also receive extended support. As with vSphere 6.5, the end of general support was pushed back from November 15, 2021, to October 15, 2022.
vSphere 7 is the latest version
Around the same time, the company also released vSphere 7.0. That version brought several new updates and will receive general support until April 2025. The new features include the ability to run modern containerised applications directly in vSphere. Security is also said to have been improved, and new operational features, such as workload-oriented Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), have been added.