vSphere 6.5/6.7 End of General Support

Posted By Rajesh Radhakrishnan May 10 2022
blog

The End of General Support for vSphere 6.5 and vSphere 6.7 is October 15, 2022.

To maintain your full level of Support and Subscription Services, VMware recommends upgrading to vSphere 7. The End of General support for vSphere 7 will be on April 2, 2025. For more information on the benefits of upgrading and how to upgrade, visit the VMware vSphere Upgrade Center and vSphere 7 Upgrade Activity Path.

If you would like assistance in moving to a newer version of vSphere, VMware’s vSphere Upgrade Service is available. This service delivers a comprehensive guide to upgrading your virtual infrastructure. It includes recommendations for planning and testing the upgrade, the actual upgrade itself, validation guidance and rollback procedures. For more information, contact your Technical Account Manager or visit VMware Professional Services and VMware Consulting Engagement Request.

Technical Guidance for vSphere 6.5 and vSphere 6.7 is available until November 15, 2023 primarily through the self-help portal. During the Technical Guidance phase, VMware does not offer new hardware support, server/client/guest OS updates, new security patches or bug fixes unless otherwise noted. For more information, visit VMware Lifecycle Support Phases.

Important: The End of General Support for vSphere 6.5 and vSphere 6.7 also means the End of General Support for Windows based vCenter Server instances, and for the Flash based vSphere Web Client. vSphere 7 supports the Photon-OS based vCenter Server and HTML5 based vSphere Client.

Extended Support

VMware offers extended support for both vSphere 6.5 and vSphere 6.7. VMware Extended Support is designed to provide security and Severity 1 fixes for your legacy environment while you are migrating to a newer, fully supported version of VMware software products. For more details, see the VMware Extended Support data sheet.

VMware recommends the latest version of vSphere (currently vSphere 7) when possible.

Note: vCenter Server 7 can manage ESXi 6.5 and ESXi 6.7 hosts. If hardware support for ESXi 7 restricts the ability to upgrade ESXi, you can upgrade vCenter Server to version 7 to avail of some enhancements and improvements included in vSphere 7.