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© 2026 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Page 16 of 34 Virtualization Requirements for VMware vSphere ESXi Overview ● For an overview of VMware vSphere ESXi as a supported virtualization environment, see the Introduction to Supported Virtualization Environments. ● In general, applications on a compatible ESXi release are supported on Cisco and 3rdparty hardware listed in the VMware by Broadcom Compatibility Guide as supported for that ESXi release. ◦ Cisco calling appliances: Business Edition 6000/7000 M5, M6, M7 generations and Cisco Expressway CE1400V M7. ◦ Cisco UCS, HX, HCI, HCIX models (a Cisco-specific ESXi image may be required). 3rd party compute with local DAS storage or 3rdparty storage (local DAS, 3rd party SAN/NAS, 3rd party HCI). ● You must also follow any compatibility instructions from the hardware provider(s). For example, the Cisco UCS Hardware and Software Compatibility tool. ● You must also follow the application rules for CPU, Memory, Storage, and Network in this chapter. Application / Hypervisor Compatibility ESXi releases through 8.0 can be described as Major and Minor. Within a Major/Minor, there are various Update and patch releases, and other versioned components like Virtual Machine File System (vmfs), Virtual Machine Hardware (vmv or vmx), and (only for application releases previous to 15 FCS) VMware Tools (replaced by Open VM Tools in 15 FCS and beyond). For compatibility of application releases with ESXi Major/Minor releases (for example, “8.0”, “7.0”, “6.7”), see each application’s Installation Guide. ● Compatible releases will be explicitly listed. ● Unlisted releases are not supported and not tested. ● See Broadcom.com for when compatible releases enter Broadcom’s release end-of-life and implications for support. Within a supported ESXi Major/Minor release, ● A minimum Update release may be required for application compatibility (for example, “8.0 U1” not “8.0 GA” is the minimum requirement for “8.0” compatibility). ● Subsequent Update/Patch releases (for example, “8.0 U2”, “8.0 U3”) are compatible unless explicitly indicated otherwise. Note: Certain Update/Patch releases may be compatible only with specific hardware; see Broadcom.com and your hardware’s documentation for details. ● For Virtual Machine File System (vmfs), see Broadcom.com for Major/Minor/vmfs compatibility. All vmfs versions are compatible with applications unless explicitly indicated otherwise.