Assumed Support from Third Party Solutions
While I was doing some presentation slides for one workshop, I happen to look for 3rd party virtual switches support on vSphere.
This is the KB that is from VMware. Just for those who are not aware, VMware has announced the end of support for third-party virtual switches on vSphere and vSphere 6.5 Update 1 will be the last release to support these switches with vSwitch APIs.
While reading through the pointers I came across one point that caught my attention:
This might come as a surprise but there are customers who have implemented the above without knowing that VMware does not support.
Just by using the above for discussion. there are many solutions currently on the market that claims or market to support certain hardware or software. However, with further research, this has been a one-sided claim support. And was never two ways.
Using the above example from Cisco (hope Cisco don't hate me for that), when you hit an issue running Cisco AVS thinking that VMware supported it. When you raise a support case with VMware and needed something to be changed, or an API to be tweak, or a driver to be created/modified, you will get nothing out of it as it is unsupported in the first place.
Imagine if this is running in your production environment, you just got your environment not supported. Logging a case with Cisco might not going to solve your problem if it requires something from VMware to help support Cisco AVS.
Now to bring to attention. There are many solutions that are currently claiming to support some hardware and software. So when selecting a solution make sure to check that support comes in both ways and not just by one-sided claims. Imagine running a software and require certain support from both party where it is not supported, you are as good as hitting a dead end.
When planning for a solution, do check out both ways supportability from the vendors you are using. This avoids coming to a stop when you need the help most.
This is the KB that is from VMware. Just for those who are not aware, VMware has announced the end of support for third-party virtual switches on vSphere and vSphere 6.5 Update 1 will be the last release to support these switches with vSwitch APIs.
While reading through the pointers I came across one point that caught my attention:
What about Cisco AVS, which is part of the Cisco ACI solution? Are you also discontinuing support for AVS?
VMware has never supported Cisco AVS from its initial release.
This might come as a surprise but there are customers who have implemented the above without knowing that VMware does not support.
Just by using the above for discussion. there are many solutions currently on the market that claims or market to support certain hardware or software. However, with further research, this has been a one-sided claim support. And was never two ways.
Using the above example from Cisco (hope Cisco don't hate me for that), when you hit an issue running Cisco AVS thinking that VMware supported it. When you raise a support case with VMware and needed something to be changed, or an API to be tweak, or a driver to be created/modified, you will get nothing out of it as it is unsupported in the first place.
Imagine if this is running in your production environment, you just got your environment not supported. Logging a case with Cisco might not going to solve your problem if it requires something from VMware to help support Cisco AVS.
Now to bring to attention. There are many solutions that are currently claiming to support some hardware and software. So when selecting a solution make sure to check that support comes in both ways and not just by one-sided claims. Imagine running a software and require certain support from both party where it is not supported, you are as good as hitting a dead end.
When planning for a solution, do check out both ways supportability from the vendors you are using. This avoids coming to a stop when you need the help most.
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