[German]Brief information for users and administrators of VMware by Broadcom vCenter installations. It looks like Broadcom is going to throw the next chicane into the ring for VMware vCenter customers. From April 23, 2025, vCenter administrators will probably only be able to pull and distribute updates with update tokens.
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Previously, VMware by Broadcom products were able to download and install their own updates from the Broadcom servers.
Download ticket required from April 2025
German blog reader Olli has posted this German comment in my blog (thanks for that) and points out a change in April 2025. He writes that Broadcom has its issues with the support portal. However, many administrators would have ignored this because a VMware vCenter had previously pulled the critical updates for itself and other VMware products directly.
Broadcom will soon put a stop to this, because from 23.04.2025 a user must generate a download token in order to obtain updates. Olli has referred to the Broadcom support article VCF Authenticated downloads Configuration Update Instructions from March 21, 2025. It is about updates for VMware vCenter Server, VMware Cloud Foundation, VMware vSphere ESXi, VMware SDDC Manager and VMware vSAN.
These products will soon no longer be able to download updates from the public VMware by Broadcom repositories on the Internet. Instead, the product requires a download token, which must be obtained from the Broadcom Support Portal. According to Broadcom, the reason for this is that the downloads are individualized for each customer.
Create a download token (Source: Broadcom)
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To obtain a download token, you need to log in to the Broadcom Support Portal. The administrator can then generate a download token as described in the Broadcom support article VCF Authenticated downloads Configuration Update Instructions. The support article describes exactly what will change for each affected product. I did not find a date when this will happen in the article. But Olli mentioned April 23, 2025.
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"the reason for this is that the downloads are individualized for each customer"
Nope … lies. This is about money. If you have vmware and stop paying, you still can download patches for yours last version.