Yesterday VMware announced VMware vSphere 6. Here is an overview of the main improvements and new features (over 650 new features and innovations).

Scalability 

• vSphere Clusters: Up to 64 nodes and 8000 VMs
  
• Hosts: 480 physical CPUs, 12 TB RAM, 64 TB datastores, 1000 VMs and 32 serial ports. vGPU Nvidia support
  
• VMs: Up to 128 vCPUs and 4 TB vRAM

vCenter Server

• Platform Services Controller (PSC). The Platform Services Controller (PSC) contains common Infrastructure Services such as:
  
  • Single Sign-On
    
  • Licensing
    
  • Certificate Authority
    
  • Certificate Store
    
  • Service (Product) Registration
    
  • Other future services
    
  • PSC is a central part that is used for example by vCoud Suite parts such as vCenter, vRealize Operations, etc.). For most environments (8 or less vCenter Servers) a vCenter Server with 1 embedded PSC is sufficient.
    
• Enhanced Link Mode (ELM). Enhanced Link Mode (ELM) will support Windows and vCSA deployments and require a Platform Services Controller (PSC).
  
•  vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA):
  
  • ISO file that contains a guided installer
    
  • Embedded vPostgres database. As external database Oracle is supported.
    
  • Enhanced Linked mode support
    
  • VDP support for backup and recovery of the vCSA

 Storage

• Storage I/O Control (SIOC).  Per VM storage reservation
  
• NFS 4.1 with Kerberos support. NFS client support for NFS 4.1
  
• Virtual Volumes (VVols) and Storage Policy-Based Management. Enables VM-aware storage. VVOl is offered by storage vendors such as NetApp, Dell, PureStorage, EMC, Nimblestorage, IBM and Tintri
  
• Virtual SAN (VSAN) 6 contains the following improvements:
  
  • Scalability improvements
    

    
    

  • New On-Disk format for higher performance, efficient and scalable high performance snapshots and clones.
    
  • All flash support
    
  • Usability improvements in Web Client such as:
    
    • Storage consumption information
      
    • Resync status information
      
  • Failure Domains. Allow grouping of hosts into different logical failure zones. This ensures replicas from a VM are not provisioned onto the same logical failure zone. Failure Domains are no metro/stretched clusters! Failure Domains is also known as rack awareness.
    
  • Disks serviceability. Map the location of a magnetic or flash device from the Web Client on failures, SSD, local etc.
    
  • VSAN is sold as separate product and not included in the license

Availability

• 64 node cluster support and 6000 VMs
  
• VMware VM Component Protection (VMCP)
  
• vMotion Across vCenter Servers.
  
• vMotion across virtual (distributed) switches
  
  • No need of shared vMotion is needed
    
• Long-Distance vMotion up to 100ms RTTs
  
  • Benefits: Permanent migrations between data centers
    
  • Disaster avoidance (DA)
    
  • SRM/DA testing
    
  • Multi-site load balancing
    
• Fault Tolerance (FT) increase support for 1, 2 and 4 vCPU VMs
  
• Integration with vCloud Air (replication and backup)
  
• vSphere Replication. 5 mins increments (5.5 was 15 minutes) and 2000k replicated VMs per vCenter
  
• App HA. Support for more business critical applications

Network

• Network I/O Control (NIOC). Per VM and Distributed Switch bandwidth reservation

Management

• vSphere Web Client enhancements such as better performance and tagging improvements.
  
• The vSphere Client C# is still available in this release. No new features are in this release. Hardware versions 9 to 11 features are read-only or unavailable in the vSphere Client C#.
  
• Multi-Site Content Library. Stores and sync VMs, Templates, OVFs, ISOs and scripts from one central location and sync the content across other vCenter Servers (sites)
  
• vSphere 6 has support for Hardware Version 11. Main improvements of Hardware Version 11 are:
  
  • Maximum video memory up to 2 GB (512 MB in Hardware Version  10)
    
  • PCI pass-through 16 devices (6 in Hardware Version  10)
    
  • 32 serial ports (4 in in Hardware Version  10)

When you compare vSphere 5.0, 5.1, 5.5 & 6, vSphere 6 makes a giant leap forward.

 

More information:

• What’s New in vSphere 6.0
  
• What’s New in vSphere 6.0 – Platform
  
• vSphere 6.0 Datasheet
  
• vExpert Blogs about vSphere 6.0
  

Try the new VMware vSphere 6.0 features, go to the VMware Hand on Labs!

Disclaimer.
The information in this article is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights. This article does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. It is solely my opinion.