VMware recently announced a major upgrade for its vSphere — 7 U1. Specifically, vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) will come to receive a lot of new abilities. The upgrading tool will include NSX-T support, consecutive VMware vSAN updating, parallel remediation across clusters, Lenovo XClarity Integrator support, and other features.

Since the end of the global lockdown is nowhere in sight, you have to be able to work effectively and securely from anywhere. To better accommodate that, VMware recently rolled out the new updates for its flagship VDI suite, Horizon 8. There’s a lot to talk about: HTML Access by Default, New Deployment Options, REST API, Digital Watermark, and more!

Whether you have already switched to VMware vSphere 7 or not, new knowledge never hurt anybody. There are various novelties that have been introduced in this version. For example, this article will cover tips related to increasing Shell session timeout, using Datacenter CLI and file-level backup for vCSA, and resetting vCSA root password.

If you are a VMware ESXi 7.0 user, you might bump into something called the Purple Screen of Death (PSOD). This happens when the VMkernel of your host experiences a critical error and terminates all running VMs. Dump Collector, a VSCA support tool, enables saving the VMkernel memory to a network server to recover it if needed.

Buying every separate feature or tool from VMware vSphere can prove too expensive for small deployments. Not having vCenter will mean you can’t run the host, which has vCenter Server Appliance, in maintenance mode. Nonetheless, you’ll still need to update your ESXi to the latest version for the environment to work properly.

You can still keep VM templates in a separate folder, working with them individually. Or you can use Content Library in vSphere 7.0 along with Check-in and Check-out. In the updated suite, you can use versioning, manage your templates, and keep track. With these new options, you can revert to the exact version from the list or just delete it.

We need tools that simplify upgrading, migrating, and managing, and VMware delivers. The recent launch presented the new version of the vSphere Update Manager (VUM) — vSphere Lifecycle Manager. Not only does it allow to upgrade vSphere clusters and ESXi hosts, it now has image management to keep the hosts in the desired state.

Deliberating about choosing the necessary suite should consider various issues. For Windows VMs it’s just VMware tools and that’s it. For Linux VMs, you have to abide by the VMware Compatibility Guide, which is very strict, as you know. Open-VM tools are not worse, even better at some points, than the VMware ones, but nuances are due.

Each new VMware vSphere release introduces new features and functions in addition to fixing the drawbacks that may have been in the previous version. With each new one, you need to upgrade VMware Tools in all your VMs and check if you need to upgrade their VM compatibility, otherwise they won’t have access to the desired perks.