For the last time in 2023, it’s time for us to visit VMware’s Product Lifecycle Matrix and review what’s leaving VMware End of General Support through November and December 2023. With the Broadcom acquisition of VMware gathering momentum, we may see some changes, so keep an eye on the VMware site for changes.
What's going and when?
The following table shows products leaving General Support.
Date
Products
8th Nov 2023
VMware vRealize Automation 8.10.1
VMware vRealize Orchestrator 8.10.1
11th Nov 2023
VMware vRealize True Visibility Suite 1.0.0
21st Nov 2023
VMware HCX 4.5.1
23rd Nov 2023
Workspace ONE UEM Console 2204
30th Nov 2023
Dynamic Environment Manager 10 2111
App Volumes 4 2111
ThinApp 2111
6th Dec 2023
vRealize Automation 8.10.2
vRealize Orchestrator 8.10.2
vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.10
9th Dec 2023
Workspace ONE Access Connecter 22.05
14th Dec 2023
VMware Telco Cloud Automation 2.0
30th Dec 2023
Smart Assurance 10.0.x
31st Dec 2023
Integrated OpenStack 7.2
Infrastructure
The VMware cloud networking extension, HCX, sees release 4.5.1 end support, as raised in the last general support post. An upgrade to 4.7 is recommended.
Modern Apps Solutions
VMware Integrated OpenStack 7.2 can be upgraded to 7.3. Interestingly, the VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix has no listing for 7.3 at all, but does say for the 7.2 entry that “an exception to the End of General Support has been applied.”
Monitoring, Management and Automation
As expected in the last update, vRealize Automation and Orchestrator 8.10.2 and 8.10.3 leave support. As previously discussed, the recommended upgrade is VMware Aria Automation 8.12.1, taking support to May 2024. It makes sense that vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.10 also ends at that point.
A niche product is mentioned here – VMware Telco Cloud Automation 2.0. It provides cloud automation specialising in modern network functions for Telco providers. If you’re using this and are still on 2.0, the upgrade path to the current release requires quite a bit of work as you would need to go upgrade to 2.1 (for support to July next year), then 2.2 (to January 2025) and finally 2.3 (March 2025. This is why it often pays to keep on top.
VMware vRealize True Visibility Suite 1.0.0 is another obscure one. It extends VMware vRealize Operations Manager by enabling a variety of functions not available either natively in VMware vRealize Operations Manager or via regular Management Packs. It covers a range of additional monitoring capabilities by adding servers, storage, network, apps and databases. The clue to it falling out of support is in the “vRealize” name – with VMware Aria Operations replacing VMware vRealize, True Visibility appears to be no more. In this scenario, upgrade paths for True Visibility based Management Packs would require specific investigation into upgrade paths for each pack.
VMware Smart Assurance provides an automated approach to operational intelligence to reduce service impact and operations expenses. The 10.0 release was released at the end of April 2019. It can be upgraded directly to 10.1.9, which would take support out to the end of December 2026.
End User Compute
A couple of interesting points for End User Compute products.
The suite products relating to VMware Horizon 8 2111 (DEM, App Volumes and ThinApp) all go end of life in at the end of November. VMware Horizon 8 2111 itself remains in support for a further year, though this is probably not surprising given that this is an Extended Service Branch release that still has one remaining point update outstanding.
Some care and consideration should be given to interoperability when using ESB releases, especially with respect to mixing an ESB release of VMware Horizon with upgraded VMware vSphere and surrounding VMware products as well as Guest Operating systems.
Workspace ONE Access Connector 22.05 was a release specific to Cloud based Workspace ONE Access. For on-premises deployments, this release was skipped, and these should be running 22.09 at this point. As the Cloud deployments are now also on 22.09, the Connector should also be upgraded in line with this release to remain in support. Interoperability issues can arise where the release is not upgraded.
Conclusion
This brings us to the end of the November/December update. Stay tuned to the Blog for further news and have an (albeit early) Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
