Today VMware announced vSphere 5.1. This posting will
give an overview of the most interesting new features.
vSphere 5.1 will be available
September 11 2012 !!
Some highlights are as follows:
- Paul Maritz steps down as CEO after leading the company for 4 years. His successor is Pat Gelsinger
- VMware is focused on building the architecture for Cloud Computing which is called the Software Defined Datacenter
- vCloud Suite is announced, consisting
of:
- vSphere
- vCloud Director
- vCloud Networking and Security
- Site Recovery Manager
- vCenter Operations Manager
- vFabric Application Director
- vCloud API’s
- vCloud Connector
- vCenter Orchestrator
More detailed information on all these announcements follow below:
VMware changed the features in the vSphere editions.
The features below all are available now in Standard Edition as
well.
-Fault
Tolerance is now available in the Standard Edition (used to be in
Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions only)
-Storage vMotion is now available in the Standard Edition (used to be in Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions only)
-vShield Zones is now available in the Standard Edition (used to be in Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions only)
-Hot Add is now available in the Standard Edition (used to be in Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions only)
-vShield Endpoint is included in all editions. Used to be a solution which needed to be purchased extra.
-a new backup solution named vSphere Data Protection replacing VDR.
-Single Sign On for various software components in the new vCloud Suite
-distributed switches health check
-Distributed Switch Rollback and Host networking rollback
-Storage vMotion is now available in the Standard Edition (used to be in Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions only)
-vShield Zones is now available in the Standard Edition (used to be in Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions only)
-Hot Add is now available in the Standard Edition (used to be in Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions only)
-vShield Endpoint is included in all editions. Used to be a solution which needed to be purchased extra.
-a new backup solution named vSphere Data Protection replacing VDR.
-Single Sign On for various software components in the new vCloud Suite
-distributed switches health check
-Distributed Switch Rollback and Host networking rollback
Pricing
vSphere Essentials costs $495 and is licensed to run
across three physical hosts with a maximum of two processors each.
Essentials Plus adds in the vSphere Storage Appliance, a virtual SAN that runs on servers, and costs $4,495 across those three machines.
Essentials Plus adds in the vSphere Storage Appliance, a virtual SAN that runs on servers, and costs $4,495 across those three machines.
Standard Edition costs $995 per socket
Standard Edition Plus vCenter Operations Manager $1,995 per socket.
The Enterprise Edition costs $2,875 per socket
Enterprise Plus costs $3,495 per socket
VMware introduced a new suite of software named vCloud
Suite. vSphere Enterprise Plus customers will be able to upgrade for free to vCloud Suite standard edition
Others can get a 35% discount. More information on the vCloud Suite here.
Others can get a 35% discount. More information on the vCloud Suite here.
Pricing for the vCloud Suite (per
CPU):
- vCloud Suite Standard $5000/-
- Advanced $ 7,500/-
- Enterprise $ 11,500/-
An overview of vSphere 5.1 features can be seen at
the VMware website:
- What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1
- What’s new in VMware vCenter 5.1
- What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1 – Networking
- What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1 – Platform
- What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1 – Storage
- What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1 – Performance
- Introduction to VMware vSphere Replication
- Introduction to VMware vSphere Data Protection
- What’s new in VMware vSphere Storage Appliance
- What’s new in vCloud Director 5.1
info by other bloggers on vSphere
5.1
- vSphere 5.1 launch – Link Collection
- Bas Raayman
- Roy Mikes
- vSphere 5.1 – New Features and Enhancements in Networking
Virtual machines enhancements
Each vSphere edition introduces new specifications of
the virtual machine hardware. The level of virtual hardware was previous known
as Virtual Machine Hardware. With the introduction of vSphere 5.1 this has been
renamed to Virtual Machine Compatibility. The reason for this name change is
that many customers felt the need to upgrade the VMs to the latest virtual
machine hardware. When many VMs are used this is a time consuming task with
downtime for each VM. VMware decided to change the name to reduce the pressure
of upgrading to the latest virtual machine hardware.
NOTE that the new Compatibility Level nomenclature only applies to the new Web based client. The vSphere client will continue to show Virtual Hardware.
New in vSphere 5.1 is support for Microsoft Windows 8
and Windows Server 2012 guests.
vSphere 5.1 will have Virtual Machine Compatibility
version 9. It will support up to 64 virtual CPUs but this is only supported by
64-bit Windows 2003/2008 Datacenter Edition, and some Linux
distributions
Eliminating guest reboots for common VM configurations
when upgrading VMware Tools in Windows Vista and later Windows based guest OS’s.
When upgrading from VMware Tools 5.0 (or earlier) to VMware Tools 5.1 you will
still need to reboot
Other new features for virtual
machines:
- Run high performance 3D graphics apps in VMs / VDI.
- Support For nVidia GPU’s and heavier 3D Workloads (CAD)
- Nested Hypervisor support which allows to run Hyper-V and ESXi as guests on ESXi. Running nested ESXi and Hyper-V was already possible in vSphere 5 but it did not allow to run 64-bits guest inside the nested hypervisor. With vSphere 5.1 it is possible to install ESXi on bare metal, run 2 ESXi 5.x servers as guests and run for example Windows Server 2012 as guests inside the guest. Nice for demo and study!
Improvements to
vSphere Web Client
vSphere Web Client was first introduced at the release of vSphere 5. It allows administrators to manage the vSphere infrastructure from any workplace having a modern browser without having to install the full Windows client. In 5.1 the Web Client has been improved. This new client increases the number of managed objects you can work with as well as the number of concurrent active sessions without sacrificing speed.
A video demoing the Web Client 5.1 version here.
Single Sign On
VMware has a lot of different software solutions available. An administrator needed to authenticate on each of these solutions seperately. So using vCenter Server needed authentication, vCloud Director needed authentication etc. While these solutions could use a single authentication services like Microsoft Active Directory, LDAP or NIS these were not aware someone was already authenticated to another VMware solution.
This changes in vSphere 5.1. Single Sign On (SSO) is now possible for all components of the VMware vCloud Infrastructure Suite. SSO is supported when using the vSphere Web Client or the API. Single Sign On is required for Inventory Service, vCenter Server and Web Client Inventory Service
Two installation methods
VMware vSphere 5.1 will have two installation methods:
Storage enhancements
VMware increased the support for in guest clustering. In previous versions the support was limited to maximum 2 nodes running as a VM. Now support for up to 5 node Microsoft cluster using the Node Majority Model.
vSphere 5,1 now supports a Storage vMotion up to 4 parallel disk migrations per operation.
Support for 16 Gbps Fiber Channel has been added.
Support for boot from Software Fiber Channel over Ethernet ( FCoE )
Storage DRS
vSphere 5.1 enables more granular latency measurement for I/O load balancing called “VMobservedLatency”. This is achieved by measuring the I/O request-response time between a VM and the datastore. In vSphere 5.0, latency was measured as the I/O request-response time between the host and the datastore.
Storage I/O Control (SIOC)
vSphere 5.1 improves SIOC functionality by automatically computing the best latency threshold for a datastore in lieu of using a default or user selected value. This latency threshold is determined by modeling, when 90% of the throughput value is achieved.
Advanced I/O Device Management
vSphere 5.1 introduces new commands for troubleshooting I/O adapters and storage fabrics. This enables diagnosis and
querying of FC, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) adapters, providing statistical information that allows the administrator to identify issues along the entire storage chain from the HBA to the ESXi, fabric and storage port.
Efficient storage
vSphere 5.1 introduces Flexible Space Efficiency (Flex-SE), a disk format to achieve the right balance of space efficiency
and I/O throughput. This balance can be managed throughout the life cycle of a VM, from storage allocation (controlling the allocation block size) to how the blocks are managed after they are allocated (deleted blocks can be reclaimed).
This feature enables the user to determine the right level of storage efficiency for a deployment. For example, you can use Flex-SE to optimize storage efficiency for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
This feature will reclaim deleted storage in thin provisioned disk. Before vSphere 5.1 it was not possible to use the storage capacity freed when files are deleted inside the guest operating system. See this posting for more info. Some tricks needed to be done to reclaim space. One solution was to perform a storage migration. This is not needed anymore when the Flex-SE disk format is selected.
Network enhancements
vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) Health Check
In most cases when virtual machines are part of a VLAN, the VLAN needs to be configured at both the VMware virtual switch and the physical switch to which the host is connected. Also issues in misconfiguration of MTU and teaming between the virtual networking and physical networking can cause issues.
vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) Health Check tries to detect and resolve the isssue. It makes the life of the vSphere admins and network admins easier.
The distributed switch will sent a signal (Level 2 Echo Protocol with an Ethernet broadcast Frame (type 0×2289) ) to the physical switch every minute. If a configuration issue is detected this in displayed in the vSphere client.
This feature of vSphere 5.1 ensures proper physical and virtual operation by monitoring the health of physical network
configurations including VLAN, MTU or Teaming, by identifying and troubleshooting configuration errors. An example of this feature is the following:
- Ensuring the MTU Jumbo Frame setting per VLAN on a physical switch matches the vDS MTU setting.
Export/Import/Restore Distributed Port Group Settings
This feature, available only with the vSphere Web Client 5.1, enables the creation of backups for network settings (configurations) at the Distributed Port Group level and making them available for subsequent deployments.
This feature was requested by customers to allow a master virtual switch configuration. If for some reason the configuration of a vDS was lost, it was difficult to restore the configuration. Restore is now very easy.
vSphere Network Rollback
vSphere 5.1 allows rollback and recovery from network configuration errors utilizing previous configuration versions. Rollback mitigates the loss of connectivity to a host. There are two types of rollback capabilities:
Prior to vSphere 5.1 MAC addresses used by the virtual machines are provisioned by vCenter Server. However the maximum number of MAC-addresses in the pool was limited to 64,000 addresses. This sounds a lot but for large organizations like service providers this was not enough. The MAC-address allocation range was coupled to the vCenter Server ID.
In vCenter Server 5.1 this has changed. MAC prefix and range can be set by the vSphere administrator.
Link Aggregation Control Protocol Support
Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) is a standards-based method to control the bundling of several
physical network links together to form a logical channel for increased bandwidth and redundancy purposes.
LACP enables a network device to negotiate an automatic bundling of links by sending LACP packets to the peer. As part of the vSphere 5.1 release, VMware now supports this standards-based link aggregation protocol.
This dynamic protocol provides the following advantages over the static link aggregation method supported by previous versions of vSphere:
1) Plug and Play – Automatically configures and negotiates between host and access layer physical switch
2) Dynamic – Detects link failures and cabling mistakes and automatically reconfigures the links
vSphere Web Client was first introduced at the release of vSphere 5. It allows administrators to manage the vSphere infrastructure from any workplace having a modern browser without having to install the full Windows client. In 5.1 the Web Client has been improved. This new client increases the number of managed objects you can work with as well as the number of concurrent active sessions without sacrificing speed.
A video demoing the Web Client 5.1 version here.
Single Sign On
VMware has a lot of different software solutions available. An administrator needed to authenticate on each of these solutions seperately. So using vCenter Server needed authentication, vCloud Director needed authentication etc. While these solutions could use a single authentication services like Microsoft Active Directory, LDAP or NIS these were not aware someone was already authenticated to another VMware solution.
This changes in vSphere 5.1. Single Sign On (SSO) is now possible for all components of the VMware vCloud Infrastructure Suite. SSO is supported when using the vSphere Web Client or the API. Single Sign On is required for Inventory Service, vCenter Server and Web Client Inventory Service
Two installation methods
VMware vSphere 5.1 will have two installation methods:
- vSphere Simple Install: Allows to install vCenter Server in a single installation run. It will install Single Sign on, Inventory Service and vCenter Server
- vSphere Custom install: allows to customize the vCenter Server installation. Single Sign on and Inventory Service can be installed on different servers to improve scalability.
Storage enhancements
VMware increased the support for in guest clustering. In previous versions the support was limited to maximum 2 nodes running as a VM. Now support for up to 5 node Microsoft cluster using the Node Majority Model.
vSphere 5,1 now supports a Storage vMotion up to 4 parallel disk migrations per operation.
Support for 16 Gbps Fiber Channel has been added.
Support for boot from Software Fiber Channel over Ethernet ( FCoE )
Storage DRS
vSphere 5.1 enables more granular latency measurement for I/O load balancing called “VMobservedLatency”. This is achieved by measuring the I/O request-response time between a VM and the datastore. In vSphere 5.0, latency was measured as the I/O request-response time between the host and the datastore.
Storage I/O Control (SIOC)
vSphere 5.1 improves SIOC functionality by automatically computing the best latency threshold for a datastore in lieu of using a default or user selected value. This latency threshold is determined by modeling, when 90% of the throughput value is achieved.
Advanced I/O Device Management
vSphere 5.1 introduces new commands for troubleshooting I/O adapters and storage fabrics. This enables diagnosis and
querying of FC, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) adapters, providing statistical information that allows the administrator to identify issues along the entire storage chain from the HBA to the ESXi, fabric and storage port.
Efficient storage
vSphere 5.1 introduces Flexible Space Efficiency (Flex-SE), a disk format to achieve the right balance of space efficiency
and I/O throughput. This balance can be managed throughout the life cycle of a VM, from storage allocation (controlling the allocation block size) to how the blocks are managed after they are allocated (deleted blocks can be reclaimed).
This feature enables the user to determine the right level of storage efficiency for a deployment. For example, you can use Flex-SE to optimize storage efficiency for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
This feature will reclaim deleted storage in thin provisioned disk. Before vSphere 5.1 it was not possible to use the storage capacity freed when files are deleted inside the guest operating system. See this posting for more info. Some tricks needed to be done to reclaim space. One solution was to perform a storage migration. This is not needed anymore when the Flex-SE disk format is selected.
Network enhancements
vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) Health Check
In most cases when virtual machines are part of a VLAN, the VLAN needs to be configured at both the VMware virtual switch and the physical switch to which the host is connected. Also issues in misconfiguration of MTU and teaming between the virtual networking and physical networking can cause issues.
vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) Health Check tries to detect and resolve the isssue. It makes the life of the vSphere admins and network admins easier.
The distributed switch will sent a signal (Level 2 Echo Protocol with an Ethernet broadcast Frame (type 0×2289) ) to the physical switch every minute. If a configuration issue is detected this in displayed in the vSphere client.
This feature of vSphere 5.1 ensures proper physical and virtual operation by monitoring the health of physical network
configurations including VLAN, MTU or Teaming, by identifying and troubleshooting configuration errors. An example of this feature is the following:
- Ensuring the MTU Jumbo Frame setting per VLAN on a physical switch matches the vDS MTU setting.
Export/Import/Restore Distributed Port Group Settings
This feature, available only with the vSphere Web Client 5.1, enables the creation of backups for network settings (configurations) at the Distributed Port Group level and making them available for subsequent deployments.
This feature was requested by customers to allow a master virtual switch configuration. If for some reason the configuration of a vDS was lost, it was difficult to restore the configuration. Restore is now very easy.
vSphere Network Rollback
vSphere 5.1 allows rollback and recovery from network configuration errors utilizing previous configuration versions. Rollback mitigates the loss of connectivity to a host. There are two types of rollback capabilities:
- Host Networking
Rollback—Any network change that disconnects a host triggers a rollback.
Examples of configuration changes to the host networking configuration that
might trigger a rollback include:
- Changes to the speed or duplex of a physical NIC.
- Removal of a physical NIC that contains the management VMkernel network adapter. - Distributed Switch
Rollback—Incorrect updates made to distributed switches, distributed
port groups, or distributed ports trigger a switch rollback. Examples
include:
- Changing the Maximum Transmit Unit (MTU).
- Blocking all ports in the distributed port group containing the management VMkernel network adapter.
Prior to vSphere 5.1 MAC addresses used by the virtual machines are provisioned by vCenter Server. However the maximum number of MAC-addresses in the pool was limited to 64,000 addresses. This sounds a lot but for large organizations like service providers this was not enough. The MAC-address allocation range was coupled to the vCenter Server ID.
In vCenter Server 5.1 this has changed. MAC prefix and range can be set by the vSphere administrator.
Link Aggregation Control Protocol Support
Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) is a standards-based method to control the bundling of several
physical network links together to form a logical channel for increased bandwidth and redundancy purposes.
LACP enables a network device to negotiate an automatic bundling of links by sending LACP packets to the peer. As part of the vSphere 5.1 release, VMware now supports this standards-based link aggregation protocol.
This dynamic protocol provides the following advantages over the static link aggregation method supported by previous versions of vSphere:
1) Plug and Play – Automatically configures and negotiates between host and access layer physical switch
2) Dynamic – Detects link failures and cabling mistakes and automatically reconfigures the links
"MORE INFO ON THIS COMING SOON !! "-yoyoclouds
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