VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 3 Released

VMware has released vCenter 6.7 Update 3, ESXi 6.7 Update 3, vSAn 6.7 Update 3 and vSphere Replication 8.2.0.1.

Always remember to check for compatibility issues before upgrading/updating.

vCenter 6.7 Update 3

What’s new:

• vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3 supports a dynamic relationship between the IP address settings of a vCenter Server Appliance and a DNS server by using the Dynamic Domain Name Service (DDNS). The DDNS client in the appliance automatically sends secure updates to DDNS servers on scheduled intervals
• With vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3, you can configure virtual machines and templates with up to four NVIDIA virtual GPU (vGPU) devices to cover use cases requiring multiple GPU accelerators attached to a virtual machine. To use the vMotion vGPU feature, you must set the vgpu.hotmigrate.enabled advanced setting to true and make sure that both your vCenter Server and ESXi hosts are running vSphere 6.7 Update 3
• vMotion of multi GPU-accelerated virtual machines might fail gracefully under heavy GPU workload due to the maximum switchover time of 100 secs. To avoid this failure, either increase the maximum allowable switchover time or wait until the virtual machine is performing a less intensive GPU workload
• With vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3, you can publish your .vmtx templates directly from a published library to multiple subscribers in a single action instead of performing a synchronization from each subscribed library individually. The published and subscribed libraries must be in the same linked vCenter Server system, regardless if on-premises, on cloud, or hybrid. Work with other templates in content libraries does not change
• With vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3, you can change the Primary Network Identifier (PNID) of your vCenter Server Appliance. You can change the vCenter Server Appliance FQDN or host name, and also modify the IP address configuration of the virtual machine Management Network (NIC 0). For more information, see this VMware blog post
• With vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3, if the overall health status of a vSAN cluster is Red, APIs to configure or extend HCI clusters throw InvalidState exception to prevent further configuration or extension. This fix aims to resolve situations when mixed versions of ESXi host in a HCI cluster might cause vSAN network partition

See the full release notes here: release notes

ESXi 6.7 Update 3

What’s new:

• ixgben driver enhancements: The ixgben driver adds queue pairing to optimize CPU efficiency
• VMXNET3 enhancements: ESXi 6.7 Update 3 adds guest encapsulation offload and UDP, and ESP RSS support to the Enhanced Networking Stack (ENS). Checksum calculations are offloaded from encapsulated packets to the virtual device emulation and you can run RSS on UDP and ESP packets on demand. UDP RSS supports both IPv4 and IPv6, while ESP RSS supports only IPv4. The feature requires a corresponding VMXNET3 v4 driver
• NVIDIA virtual GPU (vGPU) enhancements: With vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3, you can configure virtual machines and templates with up to four vGPU devices to cover use cases requiring multiple GPU accelerators attached to a virtual machine. To use the vMotion vGPU feature, you must set the vgpu.hotmigrate.enabled advanced setting to true and make sure that both your vCenter Server and ESXi hosts are running vSphere 6.7 Update 3
• vMotion of multi GPU-accelerated virtual machines might fail gracefully under heavy GPU workload due to the maximum switch over time of 100 secs. To avoid this failure, either increase the maximum allowable switch over time or wait until the virtual machine is performing a less intensive GPU workload
• bnxtnet driver enhancements: ESXi 6.7 Update 3 adds support for Broadcom 100G Network Adapters and multi-RSS feed to the bnxtnet driver
• QuickBoot support enhancements: ESXi 6.7 Update 3 whitelists Dell EMC vSAN Ready Nodes servers R740XD and R640 for QuickBoot support
• Configurable shutdown time for the sfcbd service: With ESXi 6.7 Update 3, you can configure the shutdown time of the sfcbd service. You can set a shutdown time depending on the third-party CIM provider that you use, or else use the default setting of 10 sec

See the full release notes here: release notes

vSAN 6.7 Update 3

What’s new:

• vSAN performance enhancements. This release provides improved performance and availability SLAs on all-flash configurations with deduplication enabled. Latency sensitive applications have better performance in terms of predictable I/O latencies and increased sequential I/O throughput. Rebuild times on disk and node failures are shorter, which provides better availability SLAs
• Enhanced capacity monitoring. The capacity monitoring dashboard has been redesigned for improved visibility of overall usage, granular breakdown, and simplified capacity alerting. Capacity-related health checks are more visible and consistent. Granular capacity utilization is available per site, fault domain, and at the host/disk group level
• Enhanced resync monitoring. The Resyncing Objects dashboard introduces new logic to improve the accuracy of resync completion times, as well as granular visibility into different types of resyncing activity, such as rebalancing or policy compliance
• Data migration pre-check for maintenance mode operations. This release of vSAN introduces a dedicated dashboard to provide in-depth analysis for host maintenance mode operations, including a more descriptive pre-check for data migration activities. This report provides deeper insight into object compliance, cluster capacity and predicted health before placing a host into maintenance mode
• Increased hardening during capacity-strained scenarios. This release includes new robust handling of capacity usage conditions for improved detection, prevention, and remediation of conditions where cluster capacity has exceeded recommended thresholds
• Proactive rebalancing enhancements. You can automate all rebalancing activities with cluster-wide configuration and threshold settings. Prior to this release, proactive rebalancing was manually initiated after being alerted by vSAN health checks
• Efficient capacity handling for policy changes. This release of vSAN introduces new logic to reduce the amount of space temporarily consumed by policy changes across the cluster. vSAN processes policy resynchronizations in small batches, which efficiently utilizes capacity from the slack space reserve and simplifies user operations
• Disk format conversion pre-checks. All disk group format conversions that require a rolling data evacuation now include a backend pre-check which accurately determines success or failure of the operation before any movement of data
• Parallel resynchronization. vSAN 6.7 Update 3 includes optimized resynchronization behavior, which automatically runs additional data streams per resyncing component when resources are available. This new behavior runs in the background and provides greater I/O management and performance for workload demands
• Windows Server Failover Clusters (WSFC) on native vSAN VMDKs. vSAN 6.7 Update 3 introduces native support for SCSI-3 PR, which enables Windows Server Failover Clusters to be deployed directly on VMDKs as first class workloads. This capability makes it possible to migrate legacy deployments on physical RDMs or external storage protocols to vSAN
• Enable Support Insight in the vSphere Client. You can enable vSAN Support Insight, which provides access to all vSAN proactive support and diagnostics based on the CEIP, such as online vSAN health checks, performance diagnostics and improved support experience during SR resolution
• vSphere Update Manager (VUM) baseline preference. This release includes an improved vSAN update recommendation experience from VUM, which allows users to configure the recommended baseline for a vSAN cluster to either stay within the current version and only apply available patches or updates, or upgrade to the latest ESXi version that is compatible with the cluster
• Upload and download VMDKs from a vSAN datastore. This release adds the ability to upload and download VMDKs to and from the vSAN datastore. This capability provides a simple way to protect and recover VM data during capacity-strained scenarios
• vCenter forward compatibility with ESXi. vCenter Server can manage newer versions of ESXi hosts in a vSAN cluster, as long as both vCenter and it’s managed hosts have the same major vSphere version. You can apply critical ESXi patches without updating vCenter Server to the same version
• New performance metrics and troubleshooting utility. This release introduces a vSAN CPU metric through the performance service, and provides a new command-line utility (vsantop) for real-time performance statistics of vSAN, similar to esxtop for vSphere
• vSAN iSCSI service enhancements. The vSAN iSCSI service has been enhanced to allow dynamic resizing of iSCSI LUNs without disruption
• Cloud Native Storage. Cloud Native Storage is a solution that provides comprehensive data management for stateful applications. With Cloud Native Storage, vSphere persistent storage integrates with Kubernetes. When you use Cloud Native Storage, you can create persistent storage for containerized stateful applications capable of surviving restarts and outages. Stateful containers orchestrated by Kubernetes can leverage storage exposed by vSphere (vSAN, VMFS, NFS) while using standard Kubernetes volume, persistent volume, and dynamic provisioning primitives

See the full release notes her: release notes

vSphere Replication 8.2.0.1

What’s new:

• VMware vSphere Replication 8.2 adds compatibility with VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 2
• Support for VM encryption: You can replicate encrypted virtual machines if you are using VMware vSphere 6.7 Update 1 or later
• Minimize security risks by enabling network encryption: You can enable encryption of replication data transfer in VMware vSphere Replication 8.2, if you are using VMware vSphere 6.0 or later
• Enhancements to the Site Recovery user interface: With vSphere Replication 8.2, you can monitor target datastores in the replication details pane of the Site Recovery user interface, and use vSphere Replication reports that display transferred bytes per virtual machine and per hour
• vRealize Operations Management Pack: The new vRealize Operations Management Pack for vSphere Replication 8.2 provides increased visibility into the status of your vSphere Replication environment, RPO violations and other details. For more information, see VMware vRealize Operations Management Pack for vSphere Replication 8.2 Release Notes
• vRealize Orchestrator Plug-In for vSphere Replication 8.2. For information about new workflows, see VMware vRealize Orchestrator Plug-In for vSphere Replication 8.2 Release Notes

See the full release notes here: release notes