In a new blog post by Broadcom CEO Hock Tan VMware by Broadcom promises that they will continue to provide security updates for VMware vSphere and other products for all customers who are running the old perpetual licenses, even if those customers don’t transition to the new subscription based license model.
To ensure that customers whose maintenance and support contracts have expired and choose to not continue on one of our subscription offerings are able to use perpetual licenses in a safe and secure fashion, we are announcing free access to zero-day security patches for supported versions of vSphere, and we’ll add other VMware products over time.
At the moment, this means that the following products will get security updates, regardless of valid support status, based on the Product Lifecycle Matrix
| Product Name | End of General Support |
|---|---|
| vCenter and ESXi 7 | 02. April 2025 |
| vCenter and ESXi 8 | 11. November 2027 |
vSphere 6.7 reached end of support in October 2022 and is no longer supported, nor are any previous versions.
Update 18th April 2024: VMware by Broadcom has also published Zero Day (i.e., Critical) Security Patches for vSphere (7.x and 8.x) Perpetual License Customers with Expired Support Contracts (97805) which confirms that vSphere 7 and 8 are the versions supported, and that existing patch mechanisms will continue to work.
This is a very welcome clarification by Broadcom, as the new licensing scheme and pricing is still a hot discussion topic and hopefully this list will be expanded in the time to come!