VMware vSphere 6.0 Ends on 12th March 2020

In the era where organizations are looking for options to get their data over the cloud and make things faster, better and proactive. Virtualizing their organization with VMware has proven to be the revolutionary movement that was taken up by various organizations. VMware is an extremely popular tool for organizations because it has the ability to it typically reduces the hardware cost by 40%, deploys the system provisioning within minutes, improves the disaster recovery that results in energy & cost saving and increases the productivity of the organization. This is soc significant even in its market demand, researchers have claimed that VMware is one of the few tools that has valued more than $155 USD despite when the market had undergone a recession in between.

VMware has not become a great tool within a day, however, it has been consistent enough in delivering what it had along with the required set of updates on its offerings. Hence, ever since we"ve walked into this year the market has witnessed various transitions in the industry on various lines. VMware is another tangent of the industry which will be facing a transition. VMware vSphere 6.0 end of life is coming very soon.

There are various organizations that have moved from VMware vSphere 6.0 to 6.5 of 6.7, however, still, there are various organizations that are still using vSphere 6.0. Thus, VMware has officially announced that by 12th March vSphere 6.0 will come to an end. This has made professionals curious about what is it that will happen next now? This is something can even be seen amongst professionals who are either working on VMware vSphere 6.0 or for that matter are just thinking about taking up a VMware Certification.

What does vSphere 6.0 end of life imply?

Organizations which are still using VMware vSphere 6.0 must seriously think about now using this version since it will be making a huge transition in your operations. Organizations that are still stubborn about using vSphere 6.0 must know that one of the most important things about using VMware for the organization is the kind of support organizations receive from the VMware will come to an end in case if you are using a vSphere 6.0. And Organizations which are in the process of production cannot afford to lose out on the level of support especially while you are busy looking for help on unsupported products. Since VMware Support policy can vary because of the chosen plan.

vSphere 6.0 has reached its life, and when it will not be anymore supported by VMware which means this will end support for lifetime for certain products within vSphere 6.0. VMware vSphere 6.0 users would know that this is either End of General Support or end of Technical Guidance.

Technical Guidance

People are often found assuming technical guidance to be something else. Technical Guidance does not mean that products become unsupported instantly. VMware will still be supporting you while you are trying to resolve an issue for operating these products. However, there will always be some serious limitations to how far can this go?, since this is outside of the General Support. Which means most of the time these products" cases would demand an update/ upgrade.

Technical Guidance will be made available to you using the self-help portal however telephonic conversation will not be made available. Users may even open a support request online to receive support and workaround for low-severity issues on supported configurations only. During this phase VMware does not offer new hardware support, server/client/guest OS updates, new security patches or bug fixes unless otherwise noted. This instead for the usage by the customers operating in stable environments with systems operating under reasonably stable loads.

Organizations using vSphere 6.0 must note that ‘Technical Guidance will be made available to you only 12th March 2020’ for more information check out the VMware Lifecycle Support Phases.

What can be done about this?

Given the in hand circumstances where vSphere 6.0 is getting discontinued for life, organizations still using this version should move to vSphere 6.5 or vSphere 6.7, and you will have proper support from VMware and you don"t more to worry about production impacting scenario with vSphere 6.0 in the later stage of your business.

vSphere 6.5 or vSphere 6.7?

Keeping the above-stated factors in mind, this is one of the most important point organizations would be concerned about since this a point where you have to think about upgrades/ updates or other factors. This is because the latest release of vSphere comprises of many new features and enhancements which are great to have for the VMware Infrastructures. To compare the two of them you must consider the hardware and compatibility for the same

Compatible with the Hardware

It is imperative and mandatory at the same time that you have checked neither the servers nor storage is not connected with the latest version of vSphere so that you can use the latest version vSphere at ease and are not worried about getting new hardware for it. Thus you can take factors like these into account:-

• Physical server you are planning to upgrade on. Also, you must know which is this vSphere is supported on which hardware.
• Underlying Storage and application such as SQL failover cluster support with vSphere version.

Software Interoperability

Organizations which were using VMware vSphere 6.0 solutions were also having to interoperate with vSphere or third-party software solutions. This was integrated into their system with the current vSphere 6.0 environment this typically can be seen while, monitoring and backing up solution or any other VMware solutions.

You can refer to the support matrix from a VMware perspective in the VMware Product Interoperability Matrices. to resolve your further possible queries.