This vCenter Server 8.0 Update 2 release is a General Availability (GA) designation. For more information on the vSphere 8.0 IA/GA Release Model of vSphere Update releases, see The vSphere 8 Release Model Evolves.

NEW: This release resolves CVE-2023-34048 and CVE-2023-34056. For more information on these vulnerabilities and their impact on VMware products, see VMSA-2023-0023.

For overview of the new features in vSphere 8.0 Update 2, see What's New in vSphere 8 Update 2 and the following release notes:

• VMware vSphere With Tanzu

• Tanzu Kubernetes releases

• VMware vSAN

• VMware Host Client

• VMware vSphere+ Release Notes

The list of new features and enhancements that follows adds some of the key highlights for vCenter systems in vSphere 8.0 Update 2:

vCenter and vSphere Client

• Reduce upgrade downtime for a self-managed vCenter: vSphere 8.0 Update 2 introduces a migration-based approach for upgrading vCenter between major versions that reduces downtime to several minutes. Reduced downtime upgrade is only supported for single self-managed vCenter instances that have no vCenter HA and do not participate in Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM). For more information, see Reduced Downtime Upgrade and VMware knowledge base article 92659.

• Automatic pre-update Logical Volume Manager (LVM) snapshots for quick and reliable rollback: Starting with vSphere 8.0 Update 2, the vCenter patching orchestrator automatically creates a LVM snapshot of the vCenter before performing a patch installation to allow safe roll back in case the update fails. You can use the rollback capability only for updates from vCenter 8.0 Update 2 to a later version. For more information, see Patching vCenter Server Using the vCenter Server Management Interface and Resilient vCenter Patching.

• Detailed information about File lock owners and processes in vCenter: vSphere 8.0 Update 2 adds detailed information to file lock errors such as failed to lock the file to enable root cause analysis and troubleshooting. The new messages include details on which file is locked, which host owns the file lock and which process on that host is responsible for the file lock.

• API for vSphere plug-ins to classify vCenter events: Moving vSphere plug-ins to a remote plug-in architecture, vSphere 8.0 deprecated support for local plug-ins and some vCenter alarms were only available in the local plug-ins. With vSphere 8.0 Update 2, you can view and manage alarms related to vCenter in the vSphere plug-in and no longer switch to the legacy local plug-ins.

• Keep network configuration changes after a vCenter backup: With vSphere 8.0 Update 2, when you make changes to the network configuration or the vSphere Distributed Switch after a vCenter backup, such as adding or removing an ESXi host to VDS or an NSX port group, all changes persist when a vCenter is restored from backup.

• Non-disruptive SSL certificate renewal and replacement for vCenter: With vSphere 8.0 Update 2, you can renew or replace the vCenter machine and trusted-root certificates with no restart of the vCenter services. For more information, see Non-disruptive Certificate Management.

• vCenter support for identity federation with Microsoft Entra Active Directory (former Azure AD): vSphere 8 Update 2 adds Microsoft Entra Active Directory as an external identity provider to reduce the attack surface for vCenter. For more information, see Configure vCenter Server Identity Provider Federation for Azure AD.

• Activate retreat mode for vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) from the vSphere Client: With vSphere 8.0 Update 2, you can activate retreat mode on a vCLS cluster by using the EDIT VCLS MODE button at Configure > vSphere Cluster Services > General.

GPU

• Reduced fragmentation of vSphere DRS placement for GPUs: With vSphere 8.0 Update 2, DRS placement of VMs with vGPUs happens on ESXi hosts that are already utilized and have available capacity instead of spreading them over other hosts. This applies for full vGPU and not for partial vGPU profile sizes. For more information, see

  Improving VM Placement to Servers to Optimize Your GPU Usage in VMware vSphere 8 Update 2 and DRS Placement of vGPUs.

• vMotion stun time limit for vGPU virtual machines: Starting with vSphere 8.0 Update 2, you can set a stun time limit per virtual machine when you migrate NVIDIA vGPU-powered virtual machines with vSphere vMotion. Setting a stun time limit can prevent vCenter from powering on the virtual machine or migrating it to a host and network whose estimated maximum stun time exceeds that limit. For more information, see How to Set a Stun Time Limit for Your vGPU Virtual Machines and Migrating VMs with vGPUs.

Storage

• Migration of persistent container volumes between datastores in the vSphere Cloud Native Storage: Starting with vSphere 8.0 Update 2, you can migrate persistent container volumes between datastores in the vSphere Cloud Native Storage by using the vSphere Client. For more information, see Migrating Container Volumes in vSphere.

• Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) Support for Asynchronous CNS Queries: vSphere 8.0 Update 2 adds asynchronous API support for QueryAssociatedProfiles, QueryAssociatedEntity, QueryAssociatedEntities, and FetchEntityHealthStatusExt to improve concurrency.

• Container Storage Interface (CSI) snapshot support for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service: With vSphere 8 Update 2, you can take Persistent Volume snapshot directly with CSI in a standardized way, no need for third-party tools, to increase workload protection. For more information, see Creating Snapshots in a TKG Cluster in vSphere with Tanzu.

• Offline consolidation improvement with VMFS SE Sparse: With vSphere 8 Update 2, you see faster offline consolidation, which leads to lower Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) with VMFS snapshot offline consolidation operations, without resulting in VMFS version change.

• Extend online shared disks in clustered applications with vSphere Virtual Volumes:  With vSphere 8.0 Update 2, you can increase the size of shared disks, either physical bus sharing or multi-writer, without taking the application cluster offline and independent of raw device mapping (RDM). For Windows Server Failover Clusters (WSFC), only SCSI is supported. For Oracle RAC, both SCSI and NVMeoF (FC, TCP) are supported. For more information, see VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes Support for WSFC and You Can Hot Extend a Shared vVol Disk.

• Support for NVMe in-band migration: With vSphere 8.0 Update 2, you can manage in-band migration of vSphere Virtual Volumes namespaces between Asymmetric Namespace Access (ANA) groups to allow better balancing of I/O loads across protocol endpoints.

• Support for third-party Multipathing Plug‐In (MPP) for vSphere Virtual Volumes: vSphere 8.0 Update 2 adds support to third-party MPPs for vSphere Virtual Volumes for NVMe over Fibre Channel and NVMe over TCP datastores.

• Directory Name Lookup Cache (DNLC) for NFS 4.1: With vSphere 8.0 Update 2, you can use DNLC for NFS 4.1 to facilitate searches, power on, or listing VMs on large datastores.

• For more information on storage-related features, see What's New with vSphere 8 Core Storage.

vSphere Lifecycle Manager and Configuration Manager

• Support for vSAN witness node desired state image independent of a vSAN cluster: With vSphere 8.0 Update 2, you can upgrade a vSAN witness node with a desired state image independent of the vSAN cluster. You no longer need a dedicated witness per vSAN cluster as shared witness deployments is supported. For more information, see vSphere Lifecycle Manager and the vSAN Witness Hosts.

• vSphere Configuration Profiles Drafts: Starting with vSphere 8.0 Update 2, you can create a draft configuration and edit the configuration settings directly in the vSphere Client. For more information, see Create a Draft Configuration in vSphere Client.