Staying up to date with the latest VMware product releases can be a challenge and with something like VMware Cloud on AWS, which is delivered as a service, it can be even more tricky as new updates are constantly being made available. Historically, there has not been a consistent method for how customers can get notified of new releases and this has also come up from our VMware Cloud on AWS customers.
We posed the challenge to our Information Exchange (documentation) team to see how we can help our VMware Cloud on AWS customers and the team came back with an initial implementation of providing a standard RSS feed which you can now find at the upper right hand corner of the VMware Cloud on AWS release notes page. You can subscribe using your favorite RSS reader, I personally use Feedly and when a new release of the SDDC and/or service, you will get notified via your RSS reader. For those that want a different delivery mechanism such as email for example, you can use the free If This, Than That (IFTTT) service which I also personally use and setup an email notification or any other type of notification that IFTTT supports.
Although this initial requirement was driven by the VMware Cloud on AWS product team, we definitely wanted to see this capability delivered across all VMware products and services which is what the team has done as well. When you navigate to a specific product and/or service release notes, you will now see the additional RSS feed that you can subscribe to.
Here are just a few of the popular RSS feeds that I know folks will want to subscribe to. For a complete list of all VMware product/services, please take a look here.
- VMware Cloud on AWS - https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-on-AWS/rn_rss.xml
- VMware Cloud on DellEMC - https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-on-Dell-EMC/rn_rss.xml
- vSphere - https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/rn_rss.xml
- vSAN - https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/rn_rss.xml
- NSX-T - https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-NSX-T-Data-Center/rn_rss.xml
- HCX - https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-HCX/rn_rss.xml
- VMware Site Recovery - https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Site-Recovery/rn_rss.xml
I think this be a great first step in helping our customers easily get notified of new releases, so that can start reviewing the release notes and start planning. I know many of you have also asked for other methods such as programmatic access to release notes updates or even having a specific changelog for things like our APIs. If folks have any feedback in this area, feel free to leave a comment and I will be more than happy to share this with our documentation team.
Pin Pin Poola says
The vSphere and vSAN RSS links are the same (https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/rn_rss.xml) - is this correct or copy/paste foobar?
William Lam says
Yes, its the same because vSAN is shipped as part of vSphere ๐ You can always go to the full product page and verify yourself, I only provided a basic list of ones that I think folks may be interested in.
Stephan says
Hi,
thank you for this posting. Only for info we are using since many years the rss feed from following source
https://www.virten.net/vmware/product-release-tracker may you (VMware) can get inpired by that
and since some time we are missing the rss feed from https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories.html
Happy Holiday
SUHA AKIN AKALAN says
and the credit goes to Virten ๐
Ilya Zarkhin (@IZarkhin) says
Stephan, what do you like specifically about Virten's RSS feed (vs VMware one)?
Luc Dekens says
Great initiative!
Under which feed will I find PowerCLI?
William Lam says
it looks like PowerCLI is still using the "old" method of publishing RN https://code.vmware.com/web/tool/11.5.0/vmware-powercli and doesn't get the benefit of the new RSS feed ๐
Perhaps something to nudge our friend Jake to join the party
Ilya Zarkhin (@IZarkhin) says
Thanks, William, for helping with spreading the word. To add: RSS feed is available not only for release notes, but also for product documentation updates. For exmaple, here is all of vSphere: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/rss.xml
Mehdi says
Hi, any new link or way to subscribe to vmware by broadcom product relase RSS?