VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2: ESXi now with live patching

With VCF 5.2, Broadcom updates its VMware package: this is a whole series of technical updates that are practical for both administrators and software developers.

Advertisement

Smooth Administration

A central update is live patching for VCF and ESXi. This means that administrators can minimize or completely eliminate the downtime of their infrastructure – workloads can continue to operate, hosts no longer have to be put into maintenance mode and VMs no longer have to be moved. Initially, live patching does not work with all updates, for example, users will have to create VMkernel patches as before.

Broadcom wants to make the deployment of patches more flexible: administrators should have more control over them and be able to specify in advance when they want to update.

Optimal configuration of a VMware environment and its efficient administration is not trivial and requires a lot of background and practical knowledge. In this five-day intensive workshop you will learn how to install, configure and administer vSphere 7+8 environments using both the graphical interface and the command line. Each participant has their own vSphere system available for practice. The workshop will take place online, more information and tickets can be found here heise.de/s/qpAGd,

Please patch! Security update fixes critical vulnerability in GitLab

VMware Cloud Foundation also receives an import function for vSphere and vSAN. So users can move previously independently operated infrastructure directly to VCF and manage it centrally there. This also means that patches and upgrades arrive in batches and administrators no longer have to keep track of individual lifecycles.

Broadcom is also offering a package called VCF Edge for distributed industrial systems. It includes software including orchestration and management and is designed to be fully hybrid, i.e. from the edge equipment to the public cloud connection.

Dual DPU support is also new. Two data processing units can be used either so that one can act as a backup – that is they are configured as redundant in the event of failures. Alternatively, users can operate them in parallel to further reduce the load on the host. DPUs are processors that specialize in processing data streams; initial support for them came in vSphere 8.0.

Independent from Kubernetes VCF

All this and more Updates beyond the announcement This means greater integration of products under VCF. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is an exception, however, as users will be able to purchase TKG as an independent service in the future. The reason: Updates for Kubernetes appear much more frequently than for other VMware software — and by decoupling, developers don’t have to work with older versions.

All of these features should become generally available in Broadcom’s third quarter, so users can get them before September.

(For)