Broadcom has confirmed that support for VMware vSphere 7.x and vSAN 7.x will officially end on October 2, 2025. After this date, customers still running vSphere 7.x or vSAN 7.x will lose access to critical updates, security patches, and official Broadcom support – but they still have a choice when it comes to supporting and securing their mission-critical system. It’s one trusted by top IT leaders, including ones from high-security clearance organizations.
What are the vSphere 7 end-of-support dates?
The following vSphere 7 products will reach the End of General Support (EoGS) on October 2nd, 2025:
- VMware ESXi 7.x
- vCenter Server 7.x
- vSAN 7.x
This means that customers with active VMware 7.x environments must act quickly to avoid a support gap. If you take no action, you may find yourself without continued support or protection from newly discovered vulnerabilities — a significant operational and security risk, especially in regulated or high-availability environments.
While Broadcom’s policy allows access to existing service packs and patches via self-service for the remainder of your maintenance term, no new updates, fixes or direct support will be provided after the EoGS date.
The cost and complexity of upgrading vSphere 7.x
Broadcom recommends upgrading to a newer version of vSphere to maintain full support. But such upgrades are rarely simple or inexpensive. From revalidating third-party integrations and compliance to staff training and infrastructure planning, the transition requires significant investment — both financial and operational.
A smarter alternative: Rimini Support™ for VMware
For organizations that do not see a strong business case to migrate, Rimini Support™ for VMware offers a proven, secure path to extend the life of your VMware 7.x investments — with better support quality and uptime when compared to the vendor.
With Rimini Support for VMware, you can:
- Avoid unnecessary upgrades while maintaining full support coverage for your vSphere 7.x and vSAN 7.x environments
- Gain guaranteed support for the life of the agreement with SLAs and access to highly experienced engineers
- Receive security guidance to mitigate risk in the absence of vendor-issued patches
- Get personalized support from a dedicated team that knows your environment inside and out
A ‘Zero-Day’ approach to hypervisor security
Exploits against hypervisors, such as VMware ESX/ESXi, can be particularly devastating. All virtual machines running on a single hypervisor can be compromised, which can adversely impact critical IT workflows and processes.
Rimini Street offers a unique approach to hypervisor security. Rimini Protect™ Advanced Hypervisor Security, powered by Vali Cyber®, is an exclusive solution that provides proactive and effective vulnerability mitigation, ransomware protection, and automated remediation, all of which do not depend on vendor patches. Other advantages:
- Multiple hypervisor protection spanning VMware ESX/ESXi, Nutanix Acropolis, Citrix Hypervisor (formerly XenServer), Proxmox, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV), and all Linux-based KVM hypervisors.
- ‘Zero-Day’ proactive runtime protection using AI/ML behavioral-based detection techniques to detect file and in-memory malware with high efficacy.
- Integrated multi-factor authentication (MFA) as a solution to help protect against potentially stolen credentials in connected and air-gapped environments, providing alerts and preventing unauthorized access attempts.
- Process control prevents attacks from escaping their designated environments, such as virtual machines or containerized applications. This level of protection keeps exploits from “escaping” into the underlying hypervisor, thereby safeguarding the entire filesystem from being encrypted or exported.
The best part? Rimini Protect Advanced Hypervisor Security, powered by Vali Cyber, is automatically included with our standard Rimini Support offering for VMware clients.
Research report: Current and future state of your VMware strategy
Broadcom’s change in VMware licensing from perpetual to subscription, along with new bundles containing products customers may not need, is resulting in significant price increases. Download our latest report to understand how the hypervisor market is evolving, and what you can do to take back control of your VMware strategy. Read now