What to do when vSphere 5.5 General Support ends this September
Deadline: vSphere 5.5 General Support Ends
Wednesday 19 September 2018
With less than two months until vSphere 5.5 reaches its end of support, Cisilion’s Data Centre Solution Architect, Oliver Smith, talks us through the five key reasons why you should upgrade to a newer version of vCentre to stay in support.
We are fast approaching the End of Support Life for vSphere 5.5, which includes vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 5.5 and vCenter Server 5.5. Essentially, this means no further updates, patches and bug fixes will be released for the product. Over the past few months, I’ve spoken to my customers on their options ahead of the September deadline, and I cannot understate the importance of these five key enhancements when looking to renew:
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vCenter High Availability
• You can now cluster vCenter appliances without the need of a load balancer.
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HTML 5 vSphere client
• The new improved HTML5 web client features the clarity UI, enabling a faster response on the GUI in the browser.
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Quick Boot Feature
• Simple restarts of hypervisor services apart from having to reboot the entire physical server.
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vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 CLI
• The CLI in 6.7 includes enhancements such as repointing the vCenter Server Appliance across SSO domains.
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New Security certifications
• vSphere 6.7 now supports the FIPS 140-2 validation programme.
Of course, each virtualisation environment has its own unique challenges, so if you are interested in upgrading to stay in support and need assistance moving to a newer version of vSphere, get in touch so we can book an Innovation Centre Experience.
In this session, we can establish a comprehensive guide to upgrading your virtual infrastructure, including recommendations for planning and testing the upgrade, the actual upgrade itself, validation guidance, and rollback procedures.
Written by Oliver Smith, Cisilion’s Data Centre Solution Architect