Over the last few weeks I have noticed an increase in customers opening Support Requests (SR) for vCenter Operations Manager 5.x and I just want to re-iterate publicly that vCOps 5.x is no longer supported and reached End of General Support as of 30/12/2015.
If you open an SR with VMware GSS you will be advised to upgrade to vROps 6.6.1, however if it is a “production down” scenario and is deemed feasible then “best effort” attempts will be made to try and restore service however there will be no additional support from VMware Engineering and also no guarantee that the issue will be resolved.
Recommendation
The recommendation currently from VMware is to deploy a new instance of vRealize Operations Manager 6.6.1 which is the latest maintenance release and after around 2 months you should have enough historical and trending data to start decommissioning your vCOps instances.
Note: You do have the option to open an SR with VMware GSS to assist with this process.
Read more about vRealize Operations Manager 6.6. here:
Note: The content in these posts is still valid as changes in vROps 6.6.1 related to bug fixes and backend changes.
Additional Info:
vRealize Operations Manager 6.6.1 Release Notes:
https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Operations-Manager/6.6.1/rn/vrops-661-release-notes.html
vROps 6.6.1 Download Link:
https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?productId=656&downloadGroup=VROPS-661
Conclusion
If you are still running vCenter Operations 5.x then the time to upgrade is NOW!
Not only will you get a much better and fluid user experience with vROps 6.6.1 you can also take advantage of the new HTML5 UI and updated dashboards to make your experience of monitoring and managing your infrastructure a lot easier. This allows you to be more productive by reducing the MTTR (Mean Time To Resolution) for your issues.
Thanks for reading and please feel free to leave a comment or message me on twitter (@lukaswinn) if you found this article useful or would like further assistance or advice with upgrading to vROps 6.6.1 from vCOps 5.x.
–Lukas
lukaswinn.net 