On April 23, 2020, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has made available the third update to VMware vSphere 6.5 STIGs originally released in 2019. VMware vSphere 6.5 STIG Version 1, Release 4 includes minor updates to both the ESXi and the vCenter Server STIGs. Per the revision history provided in the updated STIG download, the following changes were made: VMware vSphere 6.5 ESXi STIG V-100543 – Reinstated requirement The ESXi host must protect the confidentiality and integrity of transmitted information by protecting ESXi management traffic.

It seems like it was just a few days ago that I was posting that vRealize Automation 8.0.1 Hotfix 2 was available. In reality, it was precisely 15 days ago. Nevertheless, on April 16, 2020, VMware released the third hotfix for vRealize Automation 8.0.1. Hotfix 3 (20 days after Hotfix 2) including seven fixes for Provisioning, the Service Broker, and vRealize CodeStream. The hotfix can be installed using vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.

In the early days of VMware ESX and VirtualCenter Server (now called vCenter Server), patching and upgrading ESX hosts was a manual and challenging task that required a significant amount of time from a virtual administrator to complete. This process included manually staging patch files as well as executing install and reboot commands to each ESX host. To simplify virtual infrastructure management, in 2007, VMware introduced a new feature with VMware VirtualCenter Server 2.

On March 27, 2020, VMware released the second hotfix for vRealize Automation 8.0.1. Included in it are sixty-three fixes for items relating to the Provisioning, vRealize Orchestrator (vRO), vRealize CodeStream, and Virtual appliance/clustering. The hotfix can be installed using vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.0.1. It is recommended to install vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.0.1 Patch 1 before installing vRealize Automation 8.0.1 Hotfix 2 (Build 8.0.1.7482). For complete details on the items that have been resolved with this hotfix, review the VMware KB article Cumulative Update for vRealize Automation 8.

While attempting to upgrade my ESXi hosts to the latest vSphere 7.0 release, I ran into the following error on all of the hosts in my home lab: The upgrade has VIBs that are missing dependencies. Remove the VIBs or use Image Builder to create a custom upgrade ISO image that contains the missing dependencies, and try to upgrade again. While the error message gives you a pretty good idea of what might be causing the issue, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of what VIBs it could be referring to.