vSphere
VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) 6.7U1
2018-10-16
Go to Downloads
VMware vCenter Server 6.7U1
2018-10-16
Go to Downloads
VMware vRealize® Log Insight™ 4.6.1 for vCenter™
2018-06-05
Go to Downloads
VMware vSphere Replication 8.1.0.4
2018-08-24
Go to Downloads
VMware vRealize Orchestrator Appliance 7.5.0
2018-09-20
Go to Downloads
VMware vRealize Operations Manager 7.0
2018-09-20
Go to Downloads
VMware NSX for vSphere 6.4.3
2018-09-11
Go to Downloads
This article provides important documentation and upgrade information that must be reviewed before upgrading to vSphere 6.7.
Resolution
TLS protocols
These products are not compatible with vSphere 6.7 at this time:
Environments with these products should not be upgraded to vSphere 6.7 at this time. This article and the VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes will be updated when a compatible release is available.
Before upgrading your environment to vSphere 6.7, review these critical articles to ensure a successful upgrade
For vSphere
Upgrades to vSphere 6.7 are only possible from vSphere 6.0 or vSphere 6.5. If you are currently running vSphere 5.5, you must first upgrade to either vSphere 6.0 or vSphere 6.5 before upgrading to vSphere 6.7.
For vCenter Server
For Distributed Virtual Switches
VMware is announcing vSphere 6.7, the latest release of the industry-leading virtualization and cloud platform. vSphere 6.7 is the efficient and secure platform for hybrid clouds, fueling digital transformation by delivering simple and efficient management at scale, comprehensive built-in security, a universal application platform, and seamless hybrid cloud experience.
vSphere 6.7 delivers key capabilities to enable IT organizations address the following notable trends that are putting new demands on their IT infrastructure:
Let’s take a look at some of the key capabilities in vSphere 6.7:
vSphere 6.7 builds on the technological innovation delivered by vSphere 6.5, and elevates the customer experience to an entirely new level. It provides exceptional management simplicity, operational efficiency, and faster time to market, all at scale.
vSphere 6.7 delivers an exceptional experience for the user with an enhancedvCenter Server Appliance (vCSA). It introduces several new APIs that improve the efficiency and experience to deploy vCenter, to deploy multiple vCenters based on a template, to make management of vCenter Server Appliance significantly easier, as well as for backup and restore. It also significantly simplifies the vCenter Server topology through vCenter with embedded platform services controller in enhanced linked mode, enabling customers to link multiple vCenters and have seamless visibility across the environment without the need for an external platform services controller or load balancers.
Moreover, with vSphere 6.7 vCSA delivers phenomenal performance improvements (all metrics compared at cluster scale limits, versus vSphere 6.5):
These performance improvements ensure a blazing fast experience for vSphere users, and deliver significant value, as well as time and cost savings in a variety of use cases, such as VDI, Scale-out apps, Big Data, HPC, DevOps, distributed cloud native apps, etc.
vSphere 6.7 improves efficiency at scale when updating ESXi hosts, significantly reducing maintenance time by eliminating one of two reboots normally required for major version upgrades (Single Reboot). In addition to that, vSphere Quick Boot is a new innovation that restarts the ESXi hypervisor without rebooting the physical host, skipping time-consuming hardware initialization.
Another key component that allows vSphere 6.7 to deliver a simplified and efficient experience is the graphical user interface itself. The HTML5-based vSphere Client provides a modern user interface experience that is both responsive and easy to use. With vSphere 6.7, it includes added functionality to support not only the typical workflows customers need but also other key functionality like managing NSX, vSAN, VUM as well as third-party components.
vSphere 6.7 builds on the security capabilities in vSphere 6.5 and leverages its unique position as the hypervisor to offer comprehensive security that starts at the core, via an operationally simple policy-driven model.
vSphere 6.7 adds support for Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 hardware devices and also introduces Virtual TPM 2.0, significantly enhancing protection and assuring integrity for both the hypervisor and the guest operating system. This capability helps prevent VMs and hosts from being tampered with, prevents the loading of unauthorized components and enables guest operating system security features security teams are asking for.
Data encryption was introduced with vSphere 6.5 and very well received. With vSphere 6.7, VM Encryption is further enhanced and more operationally simple to manage. vSphere 6.7 simplifies workflows for VM Encryption, designed to protect data at rest and in motion, making it as easy as a right-click while also increasing the security posture of encrypting the VM and giving the user a greater degree of control to protect against unauthorized data access.
vSphere 6.7 also enhances protection for data in motion by enabling encrypted vMotion across different vCenter instances as well as versions, making it easy to securely conduct data center migrations, move data across a hybrid cloud environment (between on-premises and public cloud), or across geographically distributed data centers.
vSphere 6.7 introduces support for the entire range of Microsoft’s Virtualization Based Security technologies. This is a result of close collaboration between VMware and Microsoft to ensure Windows VMs on vSphere support in-guest security features while continuing to run performant and secure on the vSphere platform.
vSphere 6.7 delivers comprehensive built-in security and is the heart of a secure SDDC. It has deep integration and works seamlessly with other VMware products such as vSAN, NSX and vRealize Suite to provide a complete security model for the data center.
vSphere 6.7 is a universal application platform that supports new workloads (including 3D Graphics, Big Data, HPC, Machine Learning, In-Memory, and Cloud-Native) as well as existing mission critical applications. It also supports and leverages some of the latest hardware innovations in the industry, delivering exceptional performance for a variety of workloads.
vSphere 6.7 further enhances the support and capabilities introduced for GPUs through VMware’s collaboration with Nvidia, by virtualizing Nvidia GPUs even for non-VDI and non-general-purpose-computing use cases such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data and more. With enhancements to Nvidia GRID™ vGPU technology in vSphere 6.7, instead of having to power off workloads running on GPUs, customers can simply suspend and resume those VMs, allowing for better lifecycle management of the underlying host and significantly reducing disruption for end-users. VMware continues to invest in this area, with the goal of bringing the full vSphere experience to GPUs in future releases.
vSphere 6.7 continues to showcase VMware’s technological leadership and fruitful collaboration with our key partners by adding support for a key industry innovation poised to have a dramatic impact on the landscape, which is persistent memory. With vSphere Persistent Memory, customers using supported hardware modules, such as those available from Dell-EMC and HPE, can leverage them either as super-fast storage with high IOPS, or expose them to the guest operating system as non-volatile memory. This will significantly enhance performance of the OS as well as applications across a variety of use cases, making existing applications faster and more performant and enabling customers to create new high-performance applications that can leverage vSphere Persistent Memory.
With the fast adoption of vSphere-based public clouds through VMware Cloud Provider Program partners, VMware Cloud on AWS, as well as other public cloud providers, VMware is committed to delivering a seamless hybrid cloud experience for customers.
vSphere 6.7 introduces vCenter Server Hybrid Linked Mode, which makes it easy and simple for customers to have unified visibility and manageability across an on-premises vSphere environment running on one version and a vSphere-based public cloud environment, such as VMware Cloud on AWS, running on a different version of vSphere. This ensures that the fast pace of innovation and introduction of new capabilities in vSphere-based public clouds does not force the customer to constantly update and upgrade their on-premises vSphere environment.
vSphere 6.7 also introduces Cross-Cloud Cold and Hot Migration, further enhancing the ease of management across and enabling a seamless and non-disruptive hybrid cloud experience for customers.
As virtual machines migrate between different data centers or from an on-premises data center to the cloud and back, they likely move across different CPU types. vSphere 6.7 delivers a new capability that is key for the hybrid cloud, called Per-VM EVC. Per-VM EVC enables the EVC (Enhanced vMotion Compatibility) mode to become an attribute of the VM rather than the specific processor generation it happens to be booted on in the cluster. This allows for seamless migration across different CPUs by persisting the EVC mode per-VM during migrations across clusters and during power cycles.
Previously, vSphere 6.0 introduced provisioning between vCenter instances. This is often called “cross-vCenter provisioning.” The use of two vCenter instances introduces the possibility that the instances are on different release versions. vSphere 6.7 enables customers to use different vCenter versions while allowing cross-vCenter, mixed-version provisioning operations (vMotion, Full Clone and cold migrate) to continue seamlessly. This is especially useful for customers leveraging VMware Cloud on AWS as part of their hybrid cloud.
As the ideal, efficient, secure universal platform for hybrid cloud, supporting new and existing applications, serving the needs of IT and the business, vSphere 6.7 reinforces your investment in VMware. vSphere 6.7 is one of the core components of VMware’s SDDC and a fundamental building block of your cloud strategy. With vSphere 6.7, you can now run, manage, connect, and secure your applications in a common operating environment, across your hybrid cloud.
This article only touched upon the key highlights of this release, but there are many more new features. To learn more about vSphere 6.7, please see the following resources.
The release of VMware PowerCLI 10.0.0 was another big one for us. As a result, PowerCLI is now available on Linux, MacOS, and Windows! As part of every major release, there’s a large number of asks for the PowerCLI poster and today we’re releasing it!
The poster features a bit of a layout refresh which conforms to a more standardized poster sizing guideline, but still features all of our cmdlets, some basic examples, and links to helpful resources.
Version 3.10 (February, 2018)
– Upgraded RVTools solution to Visual Studio 2017
– Upgraded RVTools to .Net Framework version 4.6.1
– Upgraded Log4net to version 2.0.8, Waffle.AD to version 1.8.3
and NPOI to version 2.3.0
– Connection error when TLSv1.0 and TLSv1.1 are disabled and only TLSv1.2 is
enabled is solved by using .Net Framework 4.6.1
– vInfo tab page new columns: The latency-sensitivity setting of the virtual
machine, Change Block Tracking (CBT) and disk.EnableUUID values
– vDisk tab page new columns: SCSI label, unit number and sharedBus
– vHost tab page new columns: Assigned License(s), ATS heartbeat, ATS locking
values. 0 = disabled 1 = enabled, Host Power Policy shortname, CPU Power
Management current policy and CPU power hardware support
– When Export to xlsx is executed a metadata worksheet with version number of
RVTools and date time stamp is added to the output xlsx file
– All columns in the RVTools export xlsx file(s) now have a filter
– When export to csv newline characters are replaced by spaces
– When started from cli and login fails an error message and login box was
displayed. Now RVTools will exit with exit code -1, without showing the error
message and login form.
– Added an example PowerShell script with which you can merge RVTools export
xlsx files
– Added a example PowerShell script to start Export all to xlsx for multiple vCenters
– vDatastore tab page: For NFS datastores the address column is now filled with
remote host and path info
– vDatastore tab page new columns: Datastore Cluster Name, Cluster capacity and
Cluster free space
– The upper limit on the Health check for number of VMs on a datastore is now
9999
– vHealth tab page: new column “message type” which can be used as a filter in
Excel
– vHealth tab page: hbrdisk.RDID files are no longer reported as possible zombie
files
– vHealth tab page: low disk space messages no also show the free space in MB.
– All tab pages: Refresh or auto-refresh will respect your sort order
– CLI export2xls parameters changed to export2xlsx (old parameter will still work)
– Bug Fix: invalid “Horizontal Alignment” value in xlsx style sheet.
– Bug Fix: Calculation of total snapshot size was not always correct
– Bug Fix: Child snapshot hierarchy was not always correct
– Default installation directory is changed to C:\Program Files
(x86)\RobWare\RVTools without the version number
Free E-book: VMware vSphere 6.5 Host Resources Deep Dive
Script: VMwareDisktoWindows.ps1
# VMware to Windows Disk Script
#
# Author : Ward Vissers
# created on : 08-11-2017
# version : V1.0
# Source : http://www.enterprisedaddy.com/2016/07/powercli-match-windows-disk-to-vmware-harddisk/
#
# V0.1 Testing
# V0.2 Line 33 $vm to $vm.name(Bug Found)
# V0.3 Graphical Version Select VM
# V0.4 Add Select VM from Cluster
# V1.0 Add Selection of multiple vCenter
#
# $VCServerList is a comma-separated list of vCenter servers
$VCServerList = “vCenter01.wardvissers.nl”
# Select vCenter
$VCServer = $VCServerList | Out-GridView -Title “Select vCenter Server” -OutputMode Single
# write-host $VCServer
$Cred = Get-Credential
# Write-Host $Cred
# Set Default Server Mode to Multiple
Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -DefaultVIServerMode Multiple -Confirm:$false | Out-Null
# Connect to vCenter Server(s)
Connect-VIServer -Server “$VCServer” | Out-Null
$DiskInfo= @()
# Select Cluster
$Cluster = Get-Cluster | Out-GridView -Title “Select Target Cluster Node” -OutputMode Single
# write-host $Cluster
# Select VM From Cluster
$Vm = Get-Cluster $Cluster | Get-VM | Out-GridView -Title “Select Virtuele Machine” -OutputMode Single
# write-host $vm
if (($VmView = Get-View -ViewType VirtualMachine -Filter @{“Name” = $Vm.Name})) {
$WinDisks = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_DiskDrive -Credential $Cred -ComputerName $VmView.Name
foreach ($VirtualSCSIController in ($VMView.Config.Hardware.Device | where {$_.DeviceInfo.Label -match “SCSI Controller”})) {
foreach ($VirtualDiskDevice in ($VMView.Config.Hardware.Device | where {$_.ControllerKey -eq $VirtualSCSIController.Key})) {
$VirtualDisk = “” | Select SCSIController, DiskName, SCSI_Id, DiskFile, DiskSize, WindowsDisk
$VirtualDisk.SCSIController = $VirtualSCSIController.DeviceInfo.Label
$VirtualDisk.DiskName = $VirtualDiskDevice.DeviceInfo.Label
$VirtualDisk.SCSI_Id = “$($VirtualSCSIController.BusNumber) : $($VirtualDiskDevice.UnitNumber)”
$VirtualDisk.DiskFile = $VirtualDiskDevice.Backing.FileName
$VirtualDisk.DiskSize = $VirtualDiskDevice.CapacityInKB * 1KB / 1GB
# Match disks based on SCSI ID
$DiskMatch = $WinDisks | ?{($_.SCSIPort – 2) -eq $VirtualSCSIController.BusNumber -and $_.SCSITargetID -eq $VirtualDiskDevice.UnitNumber}
if ($DiskMatch){
$VirtualDisk.WindowsDisk = “Disk $($DiskMatch.Index)”
}
else {Write-Host “No matching Windows disk found for SCSI id $($VirtualDisk.SCSI_Id)”}
$DiskInfo += $VirtualDisk
}
}
$DiskInfo | Out-GridView
}
else {Write-Host “Virtual Machine $Vm Not Found”}
Disconnect-VIServer * -Confirm:$false
I created a little script that set the correct time outs:
mscstimeoutsonvsphere.ps1:
import-module failoverclusters
get-cluster | fl *subnet*
(get-cluster).SameSubnetDelay = 1000
(get-cluster).SameSubnetThreshold = 10
(get-cluster).CrossSubnetDelay = 2000
(get-cluster).CrossSubnetThreshold = 10
get-cluster | fl *subnet*
Source:
Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS) support on ESXi/ESX (1004617)
Guidelines for Microsoft Clustering on vSphere (1037959)
VMware has released VMware Horizon 7.3.1 and Horizon Client 4.6! With this new release, Horizon 7.3 enhances key platform features, including Horizon Virtualization Pack for Skype for Business, VMware Instant Clone Technology and the Horizon Help Desk Tool.
Many new items have been introduced, such as HTML5 video redirection support for the Chrome browser and the ability to configure Windows Start menu shortcuts for desktop and application pools using the Horizon Administrator console. As always, you can count on increased operating system support for virtual desktops and clients.
Here is an overview of the new features:
VMware Horizon 7.3 Server Enhancements
Horizon Help Desk Tool
Instant Clone Technology
Windows Start Menu Shortcuts Created Using the Admin Console
Cloud Pod Architecture Scale
VMware Horizon Apps
Resiliency for Monitoring
Database Support
ADMX Templates
Remote Experience
Horizon Virtualization Pack for Skype for Business
Additional NVIDIA GRID vGPU Support
HTML5 Video Redirection
Performance Counter Improvements
Linux Virtual Desktops
USB Redirection
ThinPrint Filtering
Horizon Client 4.6 Updates
Security Update
Session Pre-launch
Apteligent
Blast Extreme
Horizon Client 4.6 for Windows
Horizon Client 4.6 for macOS
Horizon Client 4.6 for iOS
Horizon Client 4.6 for Android
Horizon Client 4.6 for Linux
Horizon Client 4.6 for Windows 10 UWP
Horizon HTML Access 4.6
The Horizon Help Desk Tool provides a troubleshooting interface for the help desk that is installed by default on Connection Servers. To access the Horizon Help Desk Tool, navigate to https://<CS_FQDN>/helpdesk, where <CS_FQDN> is the fully qualified domain name of the Connection Server, or click the Help Desk button in the Horizon Administrator console.
The Help Desk Tool was introduced in Horizon 7.2 and has been greatly expanded upon in the Horizon 7.3 release.
Help Desktop Tool features with Horizon 7.2:
Additional features with Horizon 7.3:
The user session details appear on the Details tab when you click a user name in the Computer Name option on the Sessions tab. You can view details for Horizon Client, the VDI desktop or RDSH-published desktop, CPU and memory stats, and many other details.
Blast extreme metrics that have been added include estimated bandwidth (uplink), packet loss, and transmitted and received traffic counters for imaging, audio, and CDR.
Note the following behavior:
Blast Extreme Metrics for a Windows 10 Virtual Desktop Session
This new feature provides help desk staff with a granular option to resolve problematic processes without affecting the entire user session, similar to Windows Task Manager. The session processes appear on the Processes tab when you click a user name in the Computer Name option on the Sessions tab. For each user session, you can view additional details about CPU- and memory-related processes to diagnose issues.
You can assign the following predefined administrator roles to Horizon Help Desk Tool administrators to delegate the troubleshooting tasks between administrator users:
You can also create custom roles by assigning the Manage Help Desk (Read Only) privilege along with any other privileges based on the Help Desk Administrator role or Help Desk Administrator (Read Only) role.
Members of the Help Desk Administrators (Read Only) role do not have access to following controls; in fact, functions such as Log Off and Reset are not presented in the user interface.
Watch this brief demonstration video of the Horizon Help Desk Tool to see it in action:
You can now make optimized audio and video calls with Skype for Business inside a virtual desktop without negatively affecting the virtual infrastructure and overloading the network.
All media processing takes place on the client machine instead of in the virtual desktop during a Skype audio and video call.
New support with many expanded features for the Horizon Virtualization Pack for Skype for Business can be found in Horizon 7.3 and Client 4.6.
Horizon Virtualization Pack for Skype for Business offers the following supported features:
The following table outlines the system requirements for the new release:
The following table provides the list of support Horizon clients:
This feature improves the user experience by adding desktop and application shortcuts to the Start menu of Windows client devices.
You can use Horizon Administrator to create shortcuts for the following types of Horizon 7 resources:
Shortcuts appear in the Windows Start menu and are configured by IT. Shortcuts can be categorized into folders.
Users can choose at login whether to have shortcuts added to the Start menu on their Windows endpoint device.
Watch this brief demonstration video of the new Desktop and Apps Shortcuts feature to see it in action:
Upon the initial release of instant clones in Horizon 7, we supported floating desktop pools and assignments only. Further investments have been made to Instant Clone Technology that add support for dedicated desktop pools. Fixed assignments and entitlements of users to instant-clone machines is now provided as part of Horizon 7.3.
Dedicated instant-clone desktop assignment means that there is a 1:1 relationship between users and desktops. Once an end user is assigned to a desktop, they will consistently receive access to the same desktop and corresponding virtual machine. This feature is important for apps that require a consistent hostname, IP address, or MAC address to function properly.
Note: Persistent disks are not supported. Fixed assignments to desktops does not mean persistence for changes. Any changes that the user makes to the desktop while in-session will not be preserved after logoff, which is similar to how a floating desktop pool works. With dedicated assignment, when the user logs out, a resync operation on the master image retains the VM name, IP address, and MAC address.
VMware has expanded NVIDIA GRID support with Tesla P40 GPU cards in Horizon 7.3.
This feature provides the ability to take the HTML5 video from a Chrome (version 58 or higher) browser inside a Windows VDI or RDSH system and redirect it to Windows clients. This feature uses Blast Extreme or PCoIP side channels along with a Chrome extension.
The redirected video is overlaid on the client and is enabled as well as managed using GPO settings.
Benefits include:
The default User Environment Manager timeout value has been increased. This change ensures that the USB redirection Smart Policy takes effect even when the login process takes longer than expected.
With Horizon Client 4.6, the User Environment Manager timeout value is configured only on the agent and is sent from the agent to the client.
You can now bypass User Environment Manager control of USB redirection by setting a registry key on the agent machine (VDI desktop or RDSH server). This change ensures that smart card SSO works on Teradici zero clients. Note: Requires a restart.
HKLM\Software\VMware, Inc.\VMware VDM\Agent\USB uemFlags (REG_DWORD 1)
The Windows Agent PerfMon counters for the Blast Extreme protocol have been improved to update at a constant rate and to be even more accurate.
Counters include:
Features and functions for Horizon 7 for Linux virtual desktops have been expanded:
The USB redirection feature is now supported when you use Horizon Client in nested mode. When using nesting–for example, when opening RDSH applications from a VDI desktop–you can now redirect USB devices from the client device to the first virtualization layer and then redirect the same USB device to the second virtualization layer (that is, nested session).
You can now create a filter to specify the printers that should not be redirected with ThinPrint. A new GPO ADMX template (vmd_printing_agent.admx) has been added to enable this functionality.
By default, the rule permits all client printers to be redirected.
Now even lower CPU usage is achieved with adaptive Forward Error Correction algorithms. This clever mechanism decides how to handle error correction, lowering CPU usage within virtual desktop machines as well as on client endpoint devices.
New support has been added for Blast Extreme Adaptive Transport side channels for USB and CDR communications. Once enabled, TCP port 32111 for USB traffic does not need to be opened, and USB traffic uses a side channel. This feature is supported for both virtual desktops and RDS hosts.
This feature allows IT administrators to restrict access to published applications and desktops based on both client computer and user. With client restrictions for RDSH, it is now possible to check AD security groups for specific computer names. Users only have access to desktops and apps when both the user and the client machine are entitled. For this release, the feature is supported only for Windows clients and works with global entitlements.
Pre-launch provides the ability to launch an empty (application-less) session when connecting to the Connection Server. The feature is now also available to Windows clients, in addition to macOS.
Also, it is no longer necessary to manually make changes to the client settings. You can configure automatic reconnection.
With prior client releases, users were required to configure their Blast Extreme settings before they connected to the Connection Server. After a connection was established, the options to change the Blast Extreme setting—which included H.264, Poor, Typical, and Excellent—were unavailable.
With this release, users can change the network condition setting from Excellent to Typical or the reverse while inflight to sessions. Doing so also changes the protocol connection type between TCP (for Excellent) and UDP (for Typical).
Note: End users will not be able to change the network condition setting if Poor is selected before establishing a session connection.
Horizon Client 4.6 updates include:
Horizon Client 4.6 updates include:
Horizon Client 4.6 updates include:
Horizon Client 4.6 updates include:
Horizon Client 4.6 for Android and Horizon Client 4.6 for Chrome OS updates include:
HTML Access 4.6 updates include:
Horizon Client 4.6 updates include:
Horizon Client 4.6 updates include:
We are excited about these new features in Horizon 7.3.1 and the Horizon Client 4.6. We hope that you will give them a try.
You can download it here.
Version 3.9.3 (March, 2017)
Version 3.9.2 (February, 2017)