Yesterday, 2018-05-03, VMware released an update to vSphere 6.5 meaning the latest release is now vSphere 6.5 Update 2. This is little more than two weeks since the vSphere 6.7 release and some features from vSphere 6.7 are backported to 6.5 U2.
The most important things is vCenter Server single instance solution meaning no more multi component installations to achieve e.g. Enhanced Linked mode. The Platform Service Controller (PSC) can now live within a vCenter Server and does not need to be an external solution.
————————————————————————————————————————————
Enhanced Linked Mode with embedded PSC is only supported for Greenfield deployments.
————————————————————————————————————————————
The vSphere 6.5 U2 release includes quite a few updates which you can read about in the below links but a few are:
- vMotion and cold migration of virtual machines across vCenter Server versions 6.0 Update 3 and later, also includes VMware Cloud on AWS.
- Windows vCenter Server with custom HTTP & HTTPS ports is supported when migrating to vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)
- Backup and restore to Embedded Linked Mode with replication deployment topology API.
- IPv6 support for the Key Management Server (KMS) of VMware vSphere Virtual Machine Encryption (VM Encryption).
- More alarms for e.g:
- Expiration of KMS certificates
- Missing ESXi hosts
- VM keys.
- Add tags to the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) hardware version 1.2 on ESXi via esxcli.
- New native driver to support the Broadcom SAS 3.5 IT/IR controllers with devices including the combination of NVMe, SAS, and SATA drives.
Important
Before you upgrade to vSphere 6.5 U2 make sure to Read VMware Knowledgebase article 53704
Useful Links
- ESXi 6.5 U2 Download
ESXi 6.5 U2 Release Notes - VMware vCenter Server 6.5 U2 Download
VMware vCenter Server 6.5 U2 Release Notes - VMware vSphere Replication 6.5.1.3 Download
VMware vSphere Replication 6.5.1.3 Release Notes - VMware vSphere Data Protection 6.1.8 Download
VMware vSphere Data Protection 6.1.8 Release Notes
Before you plan and complete an upgrade you must, as always, confirm compatibility which you can do via VMware Product Interoperability Matrix