VMware vSphere 8.0 Update 3 Release

VMware by Broadcom has released vCenter 8.0 update 3, ESXi 8.0 Update 3 and vSAN 8.0 Update 3.

NOTES June 25th, 20224: Before updating, check if all you system that connects to vSphere are compatible with this new release, like backup, operations, automation and other.

NOTES June 25th, 20224: vCenter is GA but ESXi is only IA

vCenter 8.0 update 3/ ESXi 8.0 Update 3

What’s new

• DPU/SmartNIC
  • High Availability with VMware vSphere Distributed Services Engine
• vSphere IaaS control plane
  • Support for running vSphere IaaS control plane on vSAN stretched clusters
• Virtual Machine Management
  • Bew Virtual Machine Compute Policy for Best Effort Virtual Machine Evacuation
• vSphere Cluster Service
  • Introducing Embedded vSphere Cluster Service (vCLS)
• vSAN
  • vSAN add-on licenses based on capacity per tebibyte (TiB)
• Security
  • TLS 1.3 and 1.2 support by using TLS profiles
• Storage/Memory
  • Memory Tiering
  • Fabric Notification support for SAN cluster
  • Support for space reclamation requests from guest operating systems on NVMe-backed vSphere Virtual Volumes datastores and Config-vVol
  • Manage the UNMAP load from ESXi hosts at a VMFS datastore level
  • Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) enhancements on vSphere Virtual Volumes
  • Support for active-active vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) with vSphere Virtual Volumes
  • VMkernel port binding for NFS v4.1 datastores
  • Support for nConnect for NFS v4.1 datastores
  • Reduced time to inflate VMFS disks
  • Improved resiliency against memory corruption on RAM-heavy ESXi hosts
  • Advanced setting to block deletion and removal of disks for VMs with snapshots
  • Hardware accelerated move (clone operation) support on NVMe devices
  • Granular monitoring for VASA provider accessibility and certification authentication status on ESXi host level
• GuestOS
  • Guest customization supports RHEL NetworkManager keyfile format
• Drivers/Network
  • There are updated drivers and more, see the release notes
• CPU
  • PCIe hot plug is updated for server platforms utilizing newer generation AMD Genoa and Intel Sapphire Rapid CPUs
  • Support for Intel Xeon Max Series processors with integrated High Bandwidth Memory (HBM)
  • CPU C-State Power virtualization
  • Cluster-wide option to retain virtual NUMA topology
• Analytics and Metrics
  • vSphere green metrics with Running Average Power Limit (RAPL) technology
  • et VM log levels without powering off the VM
• GPU
  • Support for switching between Time Sliced and Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) modes for NVIDIA virtual GPUs
  • Zero-copy support for vGPUs to enhance vSphere vMotion and vSphere DRS tasks:
  • Support for heterogeneous vGPU profiles on physical GPUs
• vSphere Lifecycle Management
  • Support for parallel hardware and firmware upgrade with vSphere Lifecycle Manager
  • VMware Photon™ 5.0 support for Update Manager Download Service (UMDS)
  • Additional lifecycle management capabilities for standalone ESXi hosts
  • Lifecycle management of standalone ESXi hosts with VMware NSX
  • Convert baseline-managed clusters to clusters managed by a single vSphere Lifecycle Manager image
  • Patch VMX-related security vulnerabilities without any disruption to your workloads
  • Customize vSphere Lifecycle Manager desired state images
  • Support for dual DPUs with vSphere Lifecycle Manager
  • Extended support for vSphere Configuration Profiles (VCP)
    • Support to baseline-managed clusters (formerly referred to as VUM clusters)
    • Support for vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS)
    • Firewall ruleset management
    • ESXi Lockdown Mode
    • Support for SNMP and PCI device configurations
• vSphere Client and vCenter
  • Warning on the maximum number of remote https connections for vCenter
  • Merging the vSAN Management SDK with the Python SDK for the VMware vSphere API
  • vCenter Universally Unique Identifier (VC_UUID) field in the vSphere Client:
  • Default HTTP response compression
  • Remove restrictions on virtual machine operations from the vSphere Client
  • Unified Management and Automation API Sessions
  • Migration of SPBM, SMS, EAM, and VLSM APIs to HTTP/JSON-based wire protocol
• ESXi 8.0 Update 3 adds support for vSphere Quick Boot to multiple servers

See the full release notes for vCenter here.

See the full release notes ESXi here.

vSAN 8.0 Update 3

What’s new

• Licensing
  • Capacity-based licensing
• Flexible Topologies
  • Stretched cluster support on vSAN ESA (VCF 5.2)
  • vSAN Max as principal storage (VCF 5.2)
  • vSAN File Services up to 250 file shares
• Data Protection
  • vSAN local data protection leveraging ESA scalable snapshots
  • Integration with VMware Live Cyber Recovery (VLCR), for faster ransomware recovery
• Improved Resiliency
  • Congestion remediation
  • Adaptive delete congestion
• Enhanced Management
  • Proactive hardware management for vSAN ESA storage devices
  • Data-at-rest encryption deactivation for vSAN ESA
  • Customizable alarm thresholds for NVMe storage devices in vSAN ESA
  • vSAN I/O Trip Analyzer cluster level view
  • Enhanced awareness of vSAN Max using Aria Operations
  • Federated vSAN health monitoring in Aria Operations

See the full release notes here.