vSphere 6.0 what's New Highlight

Scalability in vSphere 6.0:

1. vSphere ESXi 6.0 can support 64 host in cluster instead 32 in vSphere 5.5
2. 8000 VM in Cluster
3. vSphere Hypervisor 6.0 instance  can support 12TB RAM,480 logical CPU and 1024 VM.

Security Enhancement:

1. Account Management: Local account of ESXi can also be managed by esxcli as well by vCenter. In previous version it is only possible with DCUI.
2. 2.      Password Complexity Rules: previouslyit was maintain by  /etc/pam.d/ passwd now in Host Advanced System Settings.
3. 3.      Flexible Lockdown Modes: two lockdown mode
   • i.     normal lockdown mode : The DCUI access is not stopped, and users on the “DCUI.Access” list can access DCUI
   • ii.     Strict Lockdown Mode: In this mode, DCUI is stopped
4. 4.      Smart Card Authentication to DCUI: It enables DCUI login access using a Common Access Card (CAC) and Personal Identity Verification (PIV).

NVIDIA GRID Support:  NVIDIA GRID delivers a graphics experience that is equivalent to dedicated hardware when using VMware Horizon. Horizon with NVIDIA GRID vGPU enables geographically dispersed organizations to run graphics-intensive applications with 3D at scale.

VM Enhancements:

VM of 128 vCPUs and 4TB of RAM, hot-add RAM enhancements to vNUMA, WDDM 1.1 GDI acceleration, a USB 3.0 xHCI controller, and several serial and parallel port enhancements.

Guest OS support:

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=guestos

Windows Server Failover Clustering Enhancements:

vSphere 6.0 introduces support for the PVSCSI adapter with virtual machines running WSFC. This provides performance superior to that with the standard SCSI adapter.

VMware vSphere vMotion® is now fully supported with Windows Server 2008 and later when using WSFC virtual machines that are clustered across physical hosts using physical-mode RDMs.

vCenter Server Enhancements:

vCenter Server 6.0 two deploy model

1. embedded, deploys the new Platform Services Controller (PSC) and the vCenter Server system on the same machine
2. The second, external, deploys the PSC and the vCenter Server instance on separate machines.

Now comes what is Platform Services Controller. So PSC includes the common services SSO, licensing and certificate mgmt..

PSCs replicate information such as licenses, roles and permissions, and tags with other PSCs.

Certificate Management: The PSC contains the VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA). The VMCA is a root certificate authority (CA) that issues signed certificates to all vSphere 6.0 components via the solution users.

vCenter Server Appliance: vCenter Server Appliance now has the same scalability numbers as the Windows installable vCenter Server

vSphere Feature highlight:

1. 1.      vSphere vMotion: enabling users to perform live migration of virtual machines across virtual Switch, across vcenter and long distance  150ms RTT.
2. 2.      VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance Enhancements: vSphere FT now supports protection of virtual machines with up to 4 vCPUs and 64GB of memory. vSphere FT now supports all virtual disk formats: eager-zeroed thick, thick, and thin
3. 3.      vSphere High Availability Enhancements: vSphere HA now includes Virtual Machine Component Protection (VMCP), which provides enhanced protection from All Paths Down (APD) and Permanent Device Loss (PDL) conditions for block (FC, iSCSI, FCoE) and file storage (NFS). vSphere HA can now protect as many as 64 ESXi hosts and 8,000 virtual machines. It also is fully compatible with VMware Virtual Volumes, VMware vSphere Network I/O Control, IPv6, VMware NSX™, and cross vCenter Server vSphere vMotion.
4. 4.      Multisite Content Library: The Content Library simplifies virtual machine template management and distribution for organizations that have several vCenter Server systems across geographic locations.It centrally manages virtual machine templates, ISO images, and scripts. This “store once, share many” architecture reduces the time associated with distributing templates manually, enabling more time to be spent performing more-important administrative tasks.
5. 5.      Virtual Volumes: Virtual Volumes is a new virtual machine disk management and integration framework that enables array-based operations at the virtual disk level. Virtual Volumes makes SAN and NAS storage systems capable of being managed at a virtual machine level and enables the leveraging of array based data services and storage array capabilities with a virtual machine–centric approach at the granularity of a single virtual disk.
6. 6.      vSphere Data Protection Enhancements: All functionality previously available with VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced™ has been consolidated into vSphere Data Protection 6.0.

vSphere Data Protection now includes agents that enable application-consistent backup and reliable recovery of Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Microsoft SharePoint Server, including SQL Server clusters and Exchange Server database availability groups. Individual databases can be selected for backup and restore, and it is possible to restore individual Exchange Server mailboxes.

1. 7.      vSphere Networking Enhancements: vSphere Network I/O Control Enhancements vSphere Network I/O Control Version 3 enables administrators or service providers to reserve—that is, guarantee—bandwidth to a vNIC in a virtual machine or an entire distributed port group.