vSphere Memory Monitoring and Remediation, and support for snapshots of PMem VMs: vSphere Memory Monitoring and Remediation collects data and provides visibility of performance statistics to help you determine if your application workload is regressed due to Memory Mode. vSphere 7.0 Update 3 also adds support for snapshots of PMem VMs. For more information, see vSphere Memory Monitoring and Remediation.
Use vSphere Lifecycle Manager images to manage a vSAN stretched cluster and its witness host: Starting with vSphere 7.0 Update 3, you can use vSphere Lifecycle Manager images to manage a vSAN stretched cluster and its witness host. For more information, see Using vSphere Lifecycle Manager Images to Remediate vSAN Stretched Clusters.
vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) enhancements: With vSphere 7.0 Update 3, vSphere admins can configure vCLS virtual machines to run on specific datastores by configuring the vCLS VM datastore preference per cluster. Admins can also define compute policies to specify how the vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) should place vCLS agent virtual machines (vCLS VMs) and other groups of workload VMs.
Improved interoperability between vCenter Server and ESXi versions: Starting with vSphere 7.0 Update 3, vCenter Server can manage ESXi hosts from the previous two major releases and any ESXi host from version 7.0 and 7.0 updates. For example, vCenter Server 7.0 Update 3 can manage ESXi hosts of versions 6.5, 6.7 and 7.0, all 7.0 update releases, including later than Update 3, and a mixture of hosts between major and update versions.
New VMNIC tag for NVMe-over-RDMA storage traffic: ESXi 7.0 Update 3 adds a new VMNIC tag for NVMe-over-RDMA storage traffic. This VMkernel port setting enables NVMe-over-RDMA traffic to be routed over the tagged interface. You can also use the ESXCLI command esxcli network ip interface tag add -i -t NVMeRDMA to enable the NVMeRDMA VMNIC tag.
NVMe over TCP support: vSphere 7.0 Update 3 extends the NVMe-oF suite with the NVMe over TCP storage protocol to enable high performance and parallelism of NVMe devices over a wide deployment of TCP/IP networks.
In vSphere 7.x, the Update Manager plug-in, used for administering vSphere Update Manager, is replaced with the Lifecycle Manager plug-in. Administrative operations for vSphere Update Manager are still available under the Lifecycle Manager plug-in, along with new capabilities for vSphere Lifecycle Manager.
The typical way to apply patches to ESXi 7.x hosts is by using the vSphere Lifecycle Manager. For details, see About vSphere Lifecycle Manager and vSphere Lifecycle Manager Baselines and Images.
You can also update ESXi hosts without using the Lifecycle Manager plug-in, and use an image profile instead. To do this, you must manually download the patch offline bundle ZIP file after you log in to VMware Customer Connect. From the Select a Product drop-down menu, select ESXi (Embedded and Installable) and from the Select a Version drop-down menu, select 7.0. For more information, see the Upgrading Hosts by Using ESXCLI Commands and the VMware ESXi Upgrade guide.
The VMware Product Interoperability Matrix provides details about the compatibility of current and earlier versions of VMware vSphere components, including ESXi, VMware vCenter Server, and optional VMware products. Check the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix also for information about supported management and backup agents before you install ESXi or vCenter Server.
Virtual machines that are compatible with ESX 3.x and later (hardware version 4) are supported with ESXi 7.0. Virtual machines that are compatible with ESX 2.x and later (hardware version 3) are not supported. To use such virtual machines on ESXi 7.0, upgrade the virtual machine compatibility. See the ESXi Upgrade documentation.
VMware's Configuration Maximums tool helps you plan your vSphere deployments. Use this tool to view the limits for virtual machines, ESXi, vCenter Server, vSAN, networking, and so on. You can also compare limits for two or more product releases. The VMware Configuration Maximums tool is best viewed on larger format devices such as desktops and laptops.
For information about upgrading with third-party customizations, see the ESXi Upgrade documentation. For information about using Image Builder to make a custom ISO, see the ESXi Installation and Setup documentation.
During an installation or upgrade, the installer checks the compatibility of the host CPU with vSphere 7.0. If your host hardware is not compatible, a purple screen appears with an incompatibility information message, and the vSphere 7.0 installation process stops.
The copyright statements and licenses applicable to the open source software components distributed in vSphere 7.0 are available at You need to log in to your My VMware account. Then, from the Downloads menu, select vSphere. On the Open Source tab, you can also download the source files for any GPL, LGPL, or other similar licenses that require the source code or modifications to source code to be made available for the most recent available release of vSphere.
In vSphere 7.0, you can take advantage of the features available in the vSphere Client (HTML5). The Flash-based vSphere Web Client has been deprecated and is no longer available. For more information, see Goodbye, vSphere Web Client.
In vSphere 7.0, TLS 1.2 is enabled by default. TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 are disabled by default. If you upgrade vCenter Server to 7.0 and that vCenter Server instance connects to ESXi hosts, other vCenter Server instances, or other services, you might encounter communication problems.
To resolve this issue, you can use the TLS Configurator utility to enable older versions of the protocol temporarily on 7.0 systems. You can then disable the older less secure versions after all connections use TLS 1.2. For information, see Managing TLS Protocol Configuration with the TLS Configurator Utility.
In vSphere 7.0, deploying or upgrading vCenter Server in vSphere 7.0 requires the use of vCenter Server appliance, a preconfigured Linux virtual machine optimized for running vCenter Server. The new vCenter Server contains all Platform Services Controller (PSC) services, preserving the functionality and workflows, including authentication, certificate management, and licensing. It is no longer necessary nor possible to deploy and use an external Platform Services Controller. All PSC services have been consolidated into vCenter Server, and deployment and administration have been simplified.
In vSphere 7.0, the ESXi built-in VNC server has been removed. Users will no longer be able to connect to a virtual machine using a VNC client by setting the RemoteDisplay.vnc.enable configure to be true. Instead, users should use the VM Console via the vSphere Client, the ESXi Host Client, or the VMware Remote Console, to connect virtual machines. Customers desiring VNC access to a VM should use the VirtualMachine.AcquireTicket("webmks") API, which offers a VNC-over-websocket connection. The webmks ticket offers authenticated access to the virtual machine console. For more information, please refer to the VMware HTML Console SDK Documentation.
In vSphere 7.0, VMKLinux driver compatibility has been deprecated and removed. vSphere 7.0 will not contain support for VMKLinux APIs and associated VMKLinux drivers. Custom ISO will not be able to have any VMKLinux async drivers. All drivers contained in an ISO must be native drivers. All currently supported devices which are not supported by native drivers will not function and will not be recognized during installation or upgrade. VCG will not show any devices not supported by a native driver as supported in vSphere 7.0.
In vSphere 7.0, 32-bit userworld support has been deprecated. Userworlds are the components of ESXi used by partners to provide drivers, plugins, and other system extensions (distributed as VIBs). Userworlds are not customer accessible.
vSphere 7.0 provides 64-bit userworld support through partner devkits and will retain 32-bit userworld support through this major release. Support for 32-bit userworlds will be permanently removed in the next major ESXi release. To avoid loss of functionality, customers should ensure any vendor-supplied VIBs in use are migrated to 64-bit before upgrading beyond the vSphere 7.0 release.
In vSphere 7.0, the Update Manager plugin used for administering vSphere Update Manager has been replaced with the Lifecycle Manager plugin. Administrative operations for vSphere Update Manager are still available under the Lifecycle Manager plugin, along with new capabilities for vSphere Lifecycle Manager.
In a future vSphere release, support for Smart Card Authentication in DCUI will be discontinued. In place of accessing DCUI using Personal Identity Verification (PIV), Common Access Card (CAC), or SC650 smart card, users will be encouraged to perform operations through vCenter, PowerCLI, API calls, or by logging in with a username and password.
In vSphere 7.0, vendor add-ons are accessible through vCenter Server's vSphere Lifecycle Manager if the vCenter Server instance has been configured to use a proxy or Update Manager Download Service. To access add-ons from MyVMware, navigate to the Custom ISOs and Add-ons tab. Under the OEM Customized Installer CDs and Add-ons, you can find the custom add-ons from each of the vendors. For more information about vSphere Lifecycle Manager and vendor add-ons, see the Managing Host and Cluster Lifecycle documentation.
In very rare conditions, ESXi hosts with NVIDIA vGPU-powered virtual machines might intermittently fail with a purple diagnostic screen with a kernel panic error. The issue might affect multiple ESXi hosts, but not at the same time. In the backlog, you see kernel reports about heartbeat timeouts against CPU for x seconds and the stack informs about a P2M cache.
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