Update hardware version in VMware OVA after 6.5/6.7 EOL date

[miabbott]

(Split off of #1119; please see that issue for relevant discussion)

VMware vSphere 6.5/6.7 is scheduled to be EOL on Oct 15, 2022. This provides an opportunity to change the hardware version that we use by default to something newer, which would effectively block users on those older versions of vSphere from booting FCOS as a guest VM.

We should evaluate changing the hardware version to something newer than 13 (the current default) after the EOL date of vSphere 6.5/6.7

A reasonable new version would be 16 17; see the KB article for more details about hw versions - https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1003746

[bgilbert]

All of the VMware products requiring version 16 are already EOL, so we should move to 17 instead.

[miabbott]

All of the VMware products requiring version 16 are already EOL, so we should move to 17 instead.

Ah indeed, makes sense then!

[travier]

We're past the EOL date for ESXi 6.5 and 6.7. We can revisit this ticket.

[bgilbert]

We've already announced this change to coreos-status.

[bgilbert]

@travier Do we need to meet about this again? We already have the prior agreement from March.

[bgilbert]

Fix in coreos/fedora-coreos-config#2019.

[travier]

I don't think we need to meet again indeed. Maybe we should sent an update / reminder to the status list?

[Okeanos]

Will you track somewhere what the last FCOS OVA version with hardware level 13 is? Would it be possible to offer a "legacy, unsupported"-annotated link to such a version?

Would it make sense to tell people on the download page or add an attribute in the streams json that describes the current (supported) hardware level?

I understand that phasing the old level out is a very good idea (in particular because VMware doesn't support them anymore anyway) but I would welcome a good user experience surrounding that change. In particular being able to pick a "legacy" OVA for a (short) while would potentially make things a little more comfortable. If that isn't possible/feasible I'd still wish for clear communication on the downloads page explaining the minimum requirements.

[dustymabe]

Hey @Okeanos. We can note here in this ticket what the last versions were and we will (should) update this docs page noting the minimum version.

We have docs for how to modify the VMWare artifact if someone absolutely needs to go back.

[bgilbert]

The last versions that support hardware 13 should be next 37.20221015.1.0, testing 36.20221014.2.0, and stable 36.20221014.3.x. However, I concur that the downgrade instructions are the better way to use Fedora CoreOS with older VMware if necessary.

For what it's worth, I'd argue against providing a good user experience for continuing to use platforms that are unsupported by their vendors and no longer receiving security updates. We generally try to encourage good deployment practices, and at this point no one should be using those old ESXi versions. It makes sense to provide some information in a ticket and some docs about how to roll back if you absolutely have to, but IMO doing so should be possible rather than easy.

[Okeanos]

That's fair enough and I concede that this shouldn't be happening. I was mainly interested in knowing the exact cut-off and potentially being able to look it up easily (for an arbitrary value of easy). The information you provided just now as well as the plans for rollback instructions are enough to satisfy my curiosity. Thanks :)

[bgilbert]

Platforms page update is in coreos/fedora-coreos-docs#478.

[bgilbert]

coreos-status post.

[dustymabe]

The fix for this went into next stream release 37.20221021.1.0. Please try out the new release and report issues.

[dustymabe]

The fix for this went into testing stream release 36.20221030.2.1. Please try out the new release and report issues.

[dustymabe]

The fix for this went into stable stream release 36.20221030.3.0.