New Features in vSphere 6

VMware vSphere 6 is another step forward to enabling the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC). There are some very exciting new features that have just been announced so here is a (non-exhaustive) list broken down by area. I’ve also added some comments and bolded some of my favorite items.

vSphere Platform (including ESXi)

§  Increase in vSphere Host Configuration Maximums

§  480 Physical CPUs per Host

§  Up to 12 TB of Physical Memory

§  Up to 1000 VMs per Host

§  Up to 6000 VMs per Cluster

§  Virtual Hardware v11

§  128 vCPUs per VM

§  4 TB RAM per VM

§  Hot-add RAM now vNUMA aware

§  Serial and parallel port enhancements

§  A virtual machine can now have a maximum of 32 serial ports

§  Serial and parallel ports can now be removed

§  ESXi Account & Password Management

§  New ESXCLI commands to add/modify/remove local user accounts

§  Configurable account lockout policies

§  Password complexity setting via VIM API & vCenter Host Advanced System Settings

§  Improved Auditability of ESXi Admin Actions

§  Prior to vSphere 6.0, actions taken through vCenter by any user would show up as ‘vpxuser’ in ESXi logs.

§  In vSphere 6.0 actions taking through vCenter will show the actual username in the ESXi logs

§  Enhanced Microsoft Clustering (MSCS) Support

§  Support for Windows 2012 R2 and SQL 2012

§  Failover Clustering and AlwaysOn Availability Groups

§  IPv6 Support

§  PVSCSI & SCSI controller support

§  vMotion Support

§  Clustering across physical hosts with Physical Compatibility Mode RDMs (Raw Device Mapping)

§  Supported on Windows 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, and 2012 R2

vCenter 6.0

§  Scalability Improvements

§  1000 Hosts per vCenter

§  10,000 VMs per vCenter

§  64 Hosts per cluster (including VSAN!)

§  6000 VMs per cluster

§  Linked Mode no longer requires MS ADAM

§  New Simplified Architecture with Platform Services Controller

§  Centralizes common services

§  Embedded or Centralized deployment models

§  Content Library

§  Repository for vApps, VM templates, and ISOs

§  Publisher/Subscriber model with two replication models

§  Allow content to be stored in one location and replicated out to “Subscriber” vCenters

§  Certificate Management

§  Certificate management for ESXi hosts & vCenter

§  New VMware Endpoint Certificate Service (VECS)

§  New VMware Certificate Authority

§  New vMotion Capabilities

§  Cross vSwitch vMotion

§  Cross vCenter vMotion

§  Long Distance vMotion

§  vMotion across L3 boundaries

Storage & Availability

§  VMware Virtual Volumes (VVOLS)

§  Logical extension of virtualization into the storage world

§  Policy based management of storage on per-VM basis

§  Offloaded data services

§  Eliminates LUN management

§  Storage Policy-Based Management

§  Leverages VASA API to intelligently map storage to policies and capabilities

§  Polices are assigned to VMs and ensure storage performance & availability

§  Fault Tolerance

§  Multi-vCPU FT for up to 4 vCPUs

§  Enhanced virtual disk format support (thin & thick disks)

§  Ability to hot configure FT

§  Greatly increased FT host compatibility

§  Backup support with snapshots through VADP

§  Now uses copies of VMDKs for added storage redundancy (allowed to be on separate datastores)

§  vSphere Replication

§  End-to-end network compression

§  Network traffic isolation

§  Linux file system quiescing

§  Fast full sync

§  Move replicas without full sync

§  IPv6 support

§  vSphere Data Protection

§  VDP Advanced has been rolled into VDP and is no longer available for purchase (the features of VDP-A are now available for free to Essentials Plus and higher editions of vSphere!)

§  Protects up to 800 VMs per vCenter

§  Up to 20 VDP appliances per vCenter

§  Replicate backup data between VDP & EMC Avamar

§  EMC Data Domain support with DD Boost

§  Automated backup verification