Key New Features of VMware vSphere 5
Infrastructure Services
Application Services
- Availability
- Security
- Scalability
Infrastructure Services: Virtualize and Aggregate Hardware Resources
Virtualize server hardware resources so they can be shared by many machines, even aggregating resources across clusters. Utilize storage more efficiently and avoid over-provisioning with automated load balancing and access defined by business rules. Simplify network management across both physical and virtual assets.
Compute services efficiently, virtualize server resources and aggregate them into logical pools that can be precisely allocated to applications.
vSphere ESXi
vSphere ESXi provides a robust, production-proven, high performance virtualization layer that abstract server hardware resources and allow their sharing by multiple virtual machines. Unique memory management including memory compression and advanced scheduling capabilities of the vSphere host allow for the highest consolidation ratios and the best application performance, in many cases, even better than physical servers.
vSphere DRS
vSphere DRS aggregates compute resources across many clusters and dynamically allocates them to virtual machines based on business priorities, reducing management complexity through automation. vSphere DPM, included with vSphere DRS, automates energy efficiency in DRS clusters by continuously optimizing the power consumed in a DRS cluster.
Storage services abstract away from the complexity of back-end storage systems and enable the most efficient utilization of storage in virtual environments.
vSphere Storage DRS
vSphere Storage DRS leverages automated load balancing based on storage characteristics to determine the best place for virtual machine data to live.
vSphere Profile-Driven Storage
vSphere Profile-Driven Storage streamlines storage resource selection by grouping storage according to a user-defined policy.
vSphere Auto Deploy
vSphere Auto Deploy allows you to deploy more vSphere hosts running the ESXi hypervisor architecture “on the fly”. Once running, completely eliminate patching by pushing out updated images rather than scheduling patch windows.
vSphere Storage I/O Control
vSphere Storage I/O Control defines priority access to storage resources according to established business rules. This enables a pre-programmed response to occur when access to a storage resource becomes contentious.
vSphere Storage VMFS
vSphere Storage VMFS is a high performance cluster file system which abstracts away the complexity of storage hardware from applications. VMFS allows efficient sharing and controls concurrent access to storage by virtualized servers.
vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)
vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) offer a new API structure for supported 3rd party disk arrays to improve performance for common vSphere activities such as provisioning a VM.
vSphere Storage Thin Provisioning
vSphere Storage Thin Provisioning allows storage purchases to be deferred until they are really required by eliminating the need to dedicate full storage capacity upfront. Reduce storage spending by up to 50% while still providing administrators the capacity they need for future growth. Simplify storage capacity management with a single, unified tool for storage management.
vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness
vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness offers a new API structure for enabling deeper interaction between vSphere and 3rd party disk arrays. This API will enable vSphere to further understand the capabilities of any supported disk array. Capabilities such as snapshot, deduplication, replication, and others can now be communicated to vSphere in order to better associate a required SLAs with the type of storage a given virtual machine should utilize when it is created.
