Introduction
Welcome to British summer! While we would all love to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine, we still need to do our housekeeping and visit VMware’s Product Lifecycle Matrix to review what’s coming to the end of General Support this July and August 2023.
What's Going and When?
The following table shows products leaving VMware End of General Support:
Date
Products
12th July 2023
VMware vRealize Automation 8.8.2
VMware vRealize Orchestrator 8.8.2
13th July 2023
VMware ThinApp 5.x
Workspace ONE UEM Console 2111
14th July 2023
HCX 4.4
15th July 2023
VMware Cloud Director 10.3
Container Service Extension 3.1
VMware Dynamic Environment Manager 10 2106
18th July 2023
Identity Manager 3.3.6
31st July 2023
NSX Advanced Load Balancer 20.1.x
Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition 1.14.0
9th August 2023
vRealize Automation 8.9
vRealize Orchestrator 8.9
17th August 2023
Bitfusion 4.0
22nd August 2023
HCX 4.3.9
25th August 2023
Skyline Collector 3.2
31st August 2023
NSX Advanced Load Balancer 21.1.x
Infrastructure
The release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.0 should have an impact on the end of support for older releases. VCF has an N-2 policy, which should mean that 4.3 will go end of life (as per the March report, an extension was granted to support until the release of 5.0).
This fits with the note on the 4.5 entry stating “In accordance with the N-2 policy, the actual EOGS for VCF 4.5 will be the earlier of (a) the release of VCF 5.2 and (b) the EOGS of the BOM components, the first of which is the date listed”. VCF 5.0 moves away from the N-2 policy to EHP (Enterprise HCI Policy) which provides general support for a defined four years (so to 1st June 2027).
HCX 4.4 will drop in July as per its own N-2 policy. Interestingly, the patch release 4.3.9 expires after 4.4.
NSX ALB 21.1.x is on a two-year support cycle, so it meets the scheduled date in August. Upgrading to 22.1.x is recommended as this will give a further year. Bitfusion 4.0 also leaves in August, leaving 4.5 in support out to May 2025.
VMware Cloud Director (vCD) is on a two-year cycle and so leaves support in July. 10.4 has a further year.
Modern App Solutions
Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition 1.14.0 was supposed to drop out of support in May, but has had a stay of execution to at least July.
Container Service Extension 3.1, an extension for VMware Cloud Director. The end of support for this is in-line with Cloud Director 10.3 (only the last patch release, 3.1.4, supports vCD 10.4). It is recommended that the Cloud Extension is upgraded to 4.0 as this supports vCD 10.3 and 10.4 in all current patch releases, continuing support for both well into 2024.
Monitoring, Management and Automation
Two releases of vRealize Automation (and Orchestrator) leave support in the next period. The final 8.8 patch release and the base 8.9 patch release. Both releases have a straightforward upgrade path to the now re-named VMware Aria Automation 8.12.1, taking support to May 2024.
Identity Manager 3.3.6, a derivative of VMware Workspace ONE Access used for VMware vRealize Operations and other solutions, leaves support in July. While an upgrade to 3.3.7 is supported, it leaves support in November, though both releases are already subject to exception notices.
End User Compute (EUC)
The first item of note is the end of ThinApp 5.x support. This was the last release prior to the new YYMM numbering common to other VMware products. It’s remarkable as it leaves support almost 10 years after 5.0 was released.
Subsequent releases are available (the most recent being 2212), but 2111 leaves support in November this year. Interestingly, all the recent releases are on a two-year support cycle, though 2212 is on a three-year cycle.
Dynamic Environment Manager 2106 leaves support in July. The recommendation is to move to the most recent release (2303) as this has support out to March 2025.
Conclusion
This brings us to the end of the July-August 2023 update. Stay tuned to the Blog for further news.