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