What's New in vSphere 5.5
ESXi Hypervisor enhancements
- Hot-Pluggable SSD devices
As we know, PCIe SSDs are getting quite common due to
its improved performance.
In vSphere 5.5, we can now hot-swap (hot-add/
hot-remove)PCIe SSD hard disks on a running vSphere hosts without downtime. This
feature was available for SATA and SAS hard disks in the previous versions.
- Support for Reliable Memory Technology
ESXi hypervisor runs directly in memory, so any error
in memory could crash the hypervisor. In vSphere 5.5, this risk is addressed using
a new technology called Reliable Memory Technology. The system firmware
configures a region of system memory as fault resilient (Reliable Memory) and
communicates information about it to the OS. The ESXi Hypervisor uses this
information to optimize the placement of the VMkernel and other critical
components in the fault resilient region of the system memory making the
hypervisor robust against memory errors.
In PowerEdge servers this is also known as Fault
Resilient Memory.
- Enhancements to CPU C-States (Operating States)
Prior to 5.5, the vSphere was only using CPU P-states
(Performance states) for power saving. Higher P-state numbers represent slower
processor speeds. Power consumption is lower at higher P-states. To operate at
any P-state, the processor must be in the C0 operational state where the
processor is working and not idling.
A host enters ‘C-state’ or ‘C-mode’ to save energy
when the CPU is idle. The basic idea is to cut clock signals. These are
numbered starting at C0, which is normal CPU operational mode; the CPU is 100%
operational. The higher the C number is, deeper is the CPU sleep mode. At
higher C-states, more components shut down to save power. A disadvantage is that
deeper sleep states have slower wake up times. In 5.5 VMware leverages both P-states and C-States to enhance performance.
Virtual Machine enhancements
- vSphere 5.5 released new VM Hardware Version (Version 10)
- Expanded vGPU Support
One
of the main addition of vSphere 5.1 was the introduction of
hardware-accelerated 3D graphics-virtual graphics processing unit (vGPU)
support for a VM. This allows the VMs with graphic intensive applications to
take advantage of the hardware GPUs. But this support was limited only for
NVIDIA-based GPUs.
With
vSphere 5.5, the support has been extended to Intel and AMD-based GPUs as well.
There
are different rendering modes for a VM with vGPU.
o
Automatic
o
Software
o
Hardware
If
automatic mode is enabled and the VM tries to do a vMotion and the GPU is not
available in the destination then software rendering will be enabled
automatically.
If
hardware mode is enabled and the VM tries to do a vMotion and the GPU is not
available in the destination then the vMotion will not be attempted.
- Graphic Acceleration is now available for Linux Guests also
VMware vCenter enhancements
- Enhanced vCenter Single Sign-On
- Enhanced vSphere Web Client
- vSphere App HA
In
vSphere 5.5, VMware has simplified application monitoring for vSphere HA with
the introduction of vSphere App HA. This new feature works with vSphere HA host
monitoring and VM monitoring to improve application uptime. vSphere App HA can
be configured to restart an application service when an issue is detected and
if the application does not restart properly, App HA can be configured to
restart the VM. App HA uses VMware vFabric Hyperic for monitoring. To use this
feature, vSphere App HA and vFabric Hyperic is installed in a vCenter. vFabric
Hyperic will monitor the applications and act according to the policies set in
vSphere App HA.
- Enhanced VMware HA
In
vSphere 5.5, vSphere HA has been enhanced to confirm with VM the virtual
machine anti affinity rules.
vSphere Storage enhancements
- Support for 62TB VMDK
- MSCS Updates
In
addition to this VMware supports the following features related to MSCS:
o
Microsoft
Windows 2012
o
Round-robin
path policy for shared storage
- 16GB E2E Support
In vSphere 5.1, VMware introduced support to run these HBAs at 16GB. However, there was no support for full, end-to-end 16GB connectivity from host to array. To get full bandwidth, a number of 8GB connections must be created from the switch to the storage array.
In vSphere 5.5, VMware introduces 16GB end-to-end FC support. Both the HBAs and array controllers can run at 16GB as long as the FC switch between the initiator and target supports it.
- PDL AutoRemove
PDL
detects if a disk device has been permanently removed—that is, the device will
not return—based on SCSI sense codes. When the device enters this PDL state,
the vSphere host can take action to prevent directing any further, unnecessary
I/O to this device. This alleviates other conditions that might arise on the host
as a result of this unnecessary I/O.
With
vSphere 5.5, a new feature called PDL AutoRemove is introduced. This feature
automatically removes a device from a host when it enters a PDL state.
- vSphere Flash Read Cache
vSphere
Flash Read Cache enables the pooling of multiple flash based storage into a
single consumable storage.
vSphere Networking enhancements
- Traffic Filtering
o
MAC
Source and destination address qualifiers
o
System
traffic qualifiers – vSphere vMotion, vSphere management, vSphere FT and so on
o
IP
qualifiers – Protocol type, IP source and destination address, Port number
- QoS tagging
- 40 GB NIC Support
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