Plain Virtualization

With the announcement of the end of perpetual license for VMware products moving forward, there are also other changes especially in regards to the free ESXi. As per KB on 12th Feb 2024 states, the free ESXi or free vSphere hypervisor is no longer made available. This came as a surprise to me. In fact, many of our home lab and evangelist are using the free hypervisor to learn VMware solution. With this gone, this will definitely affect the fan base and results in many to use alternative. Didn't expected this to come. But understandable that Broadcom might want to stop those who are leveraging on free hypervisor for commercial use. Which I know of some who does. I would rather they change the EULA and make it fully personal license, which mean Broadcom can actually use legal action if found anyone using it for commercial reason.  But sadly, this got to happen. At least the free ESXi has a good run.

With the release of vCenter 6.5, a built-in native High Availability (HA) feature was introduced. This has been a long-awaited feature since the end of availability  of vCenter Server Heartbeat since vCenter 5.x. With the release of VCHA, I came across many times people asking how can we implement it? There are a few articles from VMware that show some of the supported topologies. However, with the realize of vSphere 6.7 U2, the recommended vCenter Server deployment is with embedded PSC. In this case, we will just look at the topology that has an embedded PSC. This is welcoming since we have less component to handle and need not require a load balancer just to load balance PSC. Let us go through some of the common questions been asked. How many instances does VCHA deploy? With VCHA, you would have three instances of vCenter namely: vCenter Server  (Active), vCenter Server (Passive), vCenter Server (Witness). How many vCenter Server licenses do I need and which edit...

VMware today announce the end availability of vSphere Data Protection (VDP) here .  vSphere 6.5 will be the last version of VDP provided. Abit of history, VDP was included since vSphere 5.0 to replace VMware Data Recovery (VDR). For existing VDP deployment, please check the respective version end of general support here .  Customer can continue to use any backup solution that utilize vSphere Storage APIs – Data Protection framework (VADP). Since VDP is an OEM from Dell-EMC Avamar, the closest product is Avamar Virtual Edition. Customers are recommended to take advantage of a Dell-EMC special migration offer to transition VDP VM protection to Dell-EMC Avamar Virtual Addition.  Check this with your local Dell-EMC team and read about it here .

Today marks the announcement from VMware to end the availability in future release of vSphere Client for Windows also known as the C# Client by many.  The last version and will be vSphere Client 6.0.  Any version of vSphere alongside with support will still be released. With this, there will only be one client moving forward in the next release of vSphere (lightly announced in Aug 2016 during VMworld as usual).  As also stated there will be two edition of Web Client in next release namely: Flex and HTML5. There will be plugins from other vendors that will not work since the time to create support for HTML5 will take times, so it makes sense for those who are dependent on those plugin to utilize the Flex.  For users who are not using any Flex dependent plugin, you can fully utilize the HTML5 based web client completely and enjoy the requirement of using Flash and away from the security vulnerability that comes with it. Currently there is a Fling of the HTML5 c...

VMware has announced the end of availability (“EOA”) of VMware vSphere ESX hypervisor 4.x and VMware Management Assistant (“vMA”) versions 1 and 4, effective August 15, 2013. Support will be as per support policy however the binary and license key for the above will no longer be available after the 15th August. For users who are still requires the above, do remember to download and keep a copy. Please refer to the announcement here . For Support matrix refer here .  Click on Lifecycle Support Matrix. Update 21st Feb 2013 Even after 15 Aug, you are still able to purchase vSphere and downgrade via the myVMware portal to vSphere 4 and use it to license the ESX 4.x.  EOA does not restrict user from downgrading. Downgrading to vSphere 4 will be disabled only when the product has End of Life (EOL).