VMware vSphere 8 Update 1 is here!

VMware has introduced the inaugural major update to its flagship vSphere 8 suite and has refined the release cycle for the upcoming version.

VMware has adopted a new approach to product releases, initially launching products with an Initial Availability (IA) status. These IA products are considered ready for production workloads and are fully certified by all partners, though some minor issues may still be encountered by users. A few weeks following the IA release, VMware will upgrade the product’s status to General Availability (GA).

vSphere 8 Update 1 gained IA status on Tuesday, featuring increased automation, the capability to allocate distinct roles to virtual GPUs, and the monitoring of power consumption on a per-VM basis. Additionally, the update incorporates support for Nvidia’s NVSwitch, enabling direct GPU-to-GPU communication.

I have provided an in-depth analysis of this update in a previous article found at https://angrysysops.com/2023/03/14/vsphere-8-update-1-announced-welcome-aboard-okta/.

Here, I will briefly highlight some key features:

vSphere 8.0 Update 1 brings numerous updates to the vSphere Distributed Services Engine, including:

  1. Support for NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPUs in Lenovo and Dell server designs
  2. UPTv2 support for NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPUs
  3. AMD Genoa CPU-based server designs from Dell
  4. Support for heterogeneous virtual GPU profiles on the same GPU hardware
  5. Integration of VMware Skyline™ Health Diagnostics™ with vCenter
  6. VM-level power consumption metrics
  7. NVSwitch support for up to 8 GPUs on a single ESXi host
  8. Okta Identity Federation for vCenter
  9. Support for Fault Tolerance of VMs with a virtual TPM (vTPM) module
  10. Quick Boot support for servers with TPM 2.0 chips

Storage-Related Updates

vSphere 8.0 Update 1 also introduces several storage-related enhancements, such as:

  1. vSphere API for Storage Awareness (VASA) version 5 for vSphere Virtual Volumes
  2. Sidecar files becoming regular files in Config-vVol
  3. Increased default capacity for Config-vVol objects
  4. NVMe over TCP support for vSphere Virtual Volumes
  5. Extended XCOPY support
  6. New file type for OSDATA volumes on SSD devices
  7. NFS traffic isolation enhancements
  8. A fourfold increase in NVMe-oF namespace capacity
  9. Support for end-to-end NVMe stack without protocol translation
  10. Support for third-party multi-pathing plug-ins to control and manage NVMe arrays

Additional Features and Enhancements

vSphere 8.0 Update 1 also brings several other features and enhancements, such as:

  1. Increased maximum for Windows Server Failover Clusters (WSFC)
  2. Scaling the number of NVMe over TCP adapters
  3. Support for hot-add and hot-remove of VMDirectPath I/O devices
  4. Increased number of PCI passthrough devices per VM
  5. Local depot overrides for ROBO standalone ESXi hosts
  6. Advanced filters in the vSphere Client
  7. Increased maximum number of NFSv3 datastores with multiple connections

Security Updates

This release resolves two low-severity CVEs, CVE-2023-1017 and CVE-2023-1018, with a maximum CVSSv3 base score of 3.3.

Downloading and Installing the Update

To download this patch from VMware Customer Connect, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Products and Accounts > Product Patches
  2. Choose VC from the “Select a Product” drop-down menu, and select 8.0.1 from the “Select a Version” drop-down menu.

Next, attach the VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-8.0.1.00000-21560480-patch-FP.iso file to the vCenter Server CD or DVD drive.

To install the update, log in to the appliance shell as a user with super administrative privileges (e.g., root) and execute the following commands:

  1. To stage the ISO: software-packages stage --iso
  2. To view the staged content: software-packages list --staged
  3. To install the staged RPMs: software-packages install --staged

For more details on using the vCenter Server shells, refer to VMware knowledge base article 2100508.

For additional information on patching vCenter Server, consult Patching and Updating vCenter Server 8.0 Deployments.

For guidance on staging patches, see Upgrading the vCenter Server Appliance.

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