VMware vSphere 6.7 and vSAN 6.7: now available!

VMware recently launched new releases of vSphere and vSAN that help organizations better manage business-critical applications in data center, public cloud or hybrid cloud environments.

Both vSphere 6.7 and vSAN 6.7 improve the user experience, increase security and provide better application support. With a series of extra functions, the user management possibilities for hybrid cloud are also being increased.

vSphere 6.7

The most important changes of vSphere 6.7 are:

• Simple and efficient management The improved vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) offers an improved user experience thanks to more efficient management options and considerable performance improvements. This provides significant time and cost savings over previous versions of vSphere.

• Extensive built-in security
  VMware AppDefense is used for the further protection of applications running in the data center or the cloud. AppDefense uses the intent of the application in question: it determines what an application should do, after which the user receives a warning as soon as a deviation occurs.
• More support for more workloads
  vSphere 6.7 continues to provide customers with a universal application platform that supports new workloads, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, in-memory, cloud-native, big data and 3D graphics.
• Seamless hybrid cloning experience
  The new vCenter Hybrid Linked Mode enables uniform visibility and management for different versions of vSphere that run locally and in public clouds (such as VMware Cloud on AWS and IBM Cloud). This allows customers to maintain their current version of vSphere on-site while enjoying the benefits of new capabilities in vSphere-based public clouds.

  A number of other new features in vSphere 6.7 are:

• ESXi Single Reboot and vSphere Quick Boot
  This feature is aimed at significantly reducing patch and upgrade times by halving the number of restarts needed. Here, hardware initialization steps are also skipped to make restarting more efficient.
• ·vSphere Persistent Memory
  vSphere Persisent Memory supports the next generation of storage devices that permanently use DRAM memory, also known as non-volatile dual in-line memory module (NVDIMM) devices.
• Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 Support and Virtual TPM 2.0
  This combination significantly improves protection and integrity for both the hypervisor and the guest operating system.

Users of vSphere 5.5, pay attention!

Upgrading to vSphere 6.7 is an important consideration in an organization's life cycle plan. Especially for users of vSphere 5.5; support for this ends September 19, 2018. It is important to note that vSphere 5.5 does not have a direct upgrade capability to vSphere 6.7. If you currently work with vSphere 5.5, you first have to upgrade to vSphere 6.0 or vSphere 6.5 before you can upgrade to vSphere 6.7.

vSAN 6.7

With vSAN 6.7, your time is reduced to gain expertise through the use of a new intuitive interface, while decision-making is accelerated through advanced monitoring and analysis.

VSAN 6.7 also introduces vSAN ReadyCare, which improves the support experience for HCI environments. VMware helps customers maintain their performance by avoiding problems or solving them quickly. The downtime is also kept to a minimum by a combination of proactive telemetry capabilities of advanced analysis of vSAN Support Insight and more investments in well-trained supporting staff.

New training courses

The following new vSphere training courses will be available soon:

• vSphere: What's New v5.5 to v6.7 (VMWN) - available from 8 June
• vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage v6.7 (VSICM) - available from June 29
• vSphere: Optimize and Scale v6.7 (VSOS) - available from July 6
• vSphere: Troubleshooting Workshop v6.7 (VST) - available from 13 July

You can already register with Global Knowledge for the new versions of these trainings. Before that time, Global Knowledge delivers the training based on version 6.5.

The new version 6.7 training courses are backwards compatible. This means that if you want to gain knowledge of vSphere version 6.5 you can 'just' follow the new training courses.

The vSAN training courses are not renewed. Because the differences between version vSAN 6.6 and 6.7 are small, these trainings remain on version 6.6.

• VMware vSAN: Deploy and Manage (VMVSAN)
• VMware vSAN: Troubleshooting Workshop (VMVSANTW)