Faster Innovation, Longer Support and Simpler Operations: New VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service 3.5
Kubernetes evolves at a steady but demanding pace, introducing new features, APIs, security updates, and operational improvements several times a year. For platform engineers, staying current isn’t just about adopting the latest Kubernetes version—it’s about using new features and maintaining security, compliance, and consistency across environments. Recognizing this balance, new VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) 3.5 directly responds to these needs, enabling teams to adopt new Kubernetes releases faster, ensuring existing Kubernetes workloads continue to function, while maintaining the operational stability enterprises rely on.
Rapid Upstream Alignment: Kubernetes 1.34 Support Available Now
The latest Kubernetes community release, 1.34, brings key capabilities like Dynamic Resource Allocation, Swap Memory Support, and selector-based authorization, which enhance workload efficiency, resource control, and security management. Broadcom strives to help platform engineers quickly benefit from these innovations. That’s why Broadcom continues to invest heavily in engineering to deliver version alignment as fast as possible, allowing customers to use the latest upstream features while maintaining enterprise-grade reliability.
Most managed services still lag 2–7 months behind the upstream CNCF release. With VKS 3.5, VMware now supports Kubernetes 1.34 just 61 days after CNCF’s August 27 release, placing it alongside the major hyperscalers. By supporting the latest Kubernetes releases faster, VMware enables customers to move faster with confidence.
Best-in-Class Support Coverage: 24 Months of Standard Support
With VKS 3.5, VMware now offers 24 months of standard support at no additional cost—the longest included standard support among major providers. Customers receive two full years of updates, patches, and security coverage, nearly doubling CNCF’s 14-month community window and giving teams the flexibility to upgrade on their own schedules.
By comparison, most hyperscalers provide only 12–14 months of standard support before shifting to paid extensions that may cost a few thousand dollars per cluster per year. Other legacy container platform vendors segment lifecycle into 6–7 months of full support, 12 months of maintenance (critical fixes only), and paid extensions for select releases only. VMware eliminates that friction entirely with a single, inclusive support term built around operational continuity, offering predictability for enterprises’ long validation cycles, staggered rollouts, and compatibility testing without added cost or complexity.
Unified Fleet Management and Policy Control Across Kubernetes Clusters
As Kubernetes environments scale, platform engineers face rising complexity in maintaining visibility and enforcing consistent standards. Managing many clusters with different configurations makes it difficult to track versions, monitor health, and ensure compliance—especially across multiple projects.
The latest VKS cluster management capabilities in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) address these challenges by providing fleet visibility and policy control through VCF Automation.
With centralized VKS cluster fleet visibility, engineers gain a single-pane-of-glass view of all clusters through the VCF Automation console. A grid-based dashboard surfaces key details, such as Kubernetes versions, workload health, and utilization across projects, helping teams plan upgrades and scale infrastructure management efficiently.
VKS policy management adds workload-level controls that enforce consistent security and configuration settings across the fleet. Supported policy types include Security, Image Registry, Quota, Custom, and Mutation. Integrated with the VCF Automation resource hierarchy and data model, policies can be defined at the Organization or Project-level and automatically propagate down to associated clusters, ensuring consistent guardrails without manual work.
VCF Automation also provides policy insights, showing adherence and violations across clusters to simplify compliance. Together, these capabilities give platform engineers unified visibility, stronger governance, and lower operational overhead, making it easier to manage Kubernetes at scale with confidence and consistency.
The Bottom Line
With VKS 3.5, VMware delivers both the speed and stability enterprise Kubernetes environments demand:
- Faster latest Kubernetes version availability: VMware is committed to empowering platform engineers, striving to deliver version alignment quickly, and remaining on pace with leading providers.
- Longest standard support: 24 months of standard support at no additional cost, designed for operational continuity. This extended lifecycle provides peace of mind and flexibility for enterprises to upgrade at their own pace, aligning changes with business needs and validation cycles.
- Simpler operations: Integrated fleet visibility and policy management through VCF Automation.
For platform engineers, this means fewer trade-offs between innovation and stability—and more time focused on delivering value to applications and development teams.
