What’s new in vSphere 6.0

Straight from PEX 2015 in San Francisco, here’s a recap of the February 2 announcement for what’s new in vSphere 6.0

Platform Enhancements:

  • 128 vCPUs per VM
  • 4TB of RAM per VM
  • 64 hosts per cluster
  • 12TB of system RAM
  • 480 vCPUs per host
  • Hot-add RAM is now vNUMA aware
  • WDDM 1.1 GDI acceleration features
  • xHCI controller for USB 3 and OSX
  • Serial and parallel port enhancements (they can now be removed)
  • Account lockout (after 10 attempts, for 2 minutes) applies to SSH and Web SDK. DCUI is still available.
  • Can change default password complexity via API call or advanced setting
  • Improved auditing: All actions now list the actual username doing the action vs. just vpxuser
  • Support for SQL 2012 AlwaysOn Availability groups within MSCS
  • IPV6 Support with MSCS
  • vMotion support for MSCS nodes (with pRDMs)
  • MSCS supports PVSCSI controllers
  • New Support for Intel GPUs – vmklinux driver
  • Expanded NVidia Support

vCenter 6.0 Features

  • Parity with Windows and Appliance scalability
  • New Platform Services Controller – Embedded or Centralized model
  • Linked Mode – Feature Parity with Windows and Appliance. Supports policies and tags
  • New Certificate Lifecycle Management for vCenter and ESXi
  • VMCA -VMware Certificate Authority – Provisions certificates
  • VECS – Stores certificates
  • Certificate options – VMCA default, VMCA Enterprise, Custom
  • Cross  vSwitch vMotion – vSS to vSS, vSS to vDS, vDS to vDS. Requires L2 network connectivity. Still transparent to Guest.
  • Cross vCenter vMotion – Simultaneously change Compute, storage, network and vCenter. Targeted for local, metro, intra-continental. Tested u pto 150ms latency.
  • Long Distance vMotion – Tested up to 150ms. Supports vVols but not required. Needs 250 Mbps per vMotion. VM UUID not changed. MAC address is also preserved. Shares, limits, and reservations are also maintained.
  • Content library – Simple content management for VM templates, vApps, ISO images and scripts
  • vSphere C# client still here – Added support for HW v10 and v11 read-only
  • vSphere web client – Improved login time (13x), right click 4x faster, charts appear faster
  • Get anywhere in the web client in one click
  • Brought back recent tasks in the web client
  • NIOC – Reserve bandwidth to guarantee service levels. Applied at vNIC level.
  • Multiple TCP/IP stacks – vMotion network will cross L3 boundaries
  • vMotion can now use its own TCP/IP stack

Storage

  • vSphere Virtual Volumes – Virtualizes SAN and NAS devices. No more LUNs on block devices.
  • VVols enables finer control with VM level storage operations using array-based operations
  • VVols Supports block and NFS protocols
  • VVols is included with vSphere at all licensing levels
  • NFS 4.1 with Kerberos

vSphere 6.0 Fault Tolerance

  • Multi-vCPU support – 4 vCPUs
  • No longer require EZT disks – Can use any disk format
  • No support for vVOls
  • Up to 8 vCPUs protected per host (mix and match VMs)
  • Greatly increased FT host compatibility
  • Requires a 10Gb network – Segmented is strongly recommended
  • Heavily modified version of xvMotion
  • Each VM has its own vmx config file, vmdsk files. Can store second VM on another array
  • Supports backup snapshosts (only), no user snapshots

vSphere Replication

  • End-to-end network compression
  • Network traffic isolation
  • Linux file system quiescing
  • Faster full sync
  • Same 15 minute RPO

vSphere 6.0 Data Protection

  • No more advanced edition – All features available in base version
  • Included with vSphere essentials and higher
  • Supports up to 800 VMs per vCenter
  • For ROBOs up to 20 VDP appliances per vCenter
  • Replicate backup data between VDP appliances and EMC Avamar
  • EMC Data domain support with DD boost
  • Automated backup verification
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Anonymous
February 4, 2015 1:40 am

Thans a lot for such a great review!
Unfortunately VDP included only with vSphere Essential *Plus*.