What's new in vSphere 5.1

One certainly nice change

Zero-downtime upgrade for VMware Tools – After you upgrade to the VMware Tools available with version 5.1, no
reboots will be required for subsequent VMware Tools upgrades.

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsphere/vmware-what-is-new-vsphere51.pdf

I am still annoyed how often VMWare is now being upgraded, some changes being quite big

New virtual machine format – New features in the virtual machine format (version 9) in vSphere 5.1 include
support for larger virtual machines, CPU performance counters and virtual shared graphics acceleration designed
for enhanced performance.

Can't wait for 100s of VMs with ghost nic issues

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Comments

dales

I quite like the new features in 5.1 they do appear to be gunning for veeam and hyper-v in this release, what with the replication feature and the vmotion and svmotion being tied together so no reliance on shared storage.

For very small companies not "needing" shared storage to release the benefits might be the final push they need to get into the virtual world. I would also like to have a play with the VCSA again and see if its moved on any I would really like to not be quoting windows cals for vcenter for my clients if at all possible.

QHalo

I haven't begun to build my new environments here so this will be going in instead of 5.0. NetApp has already released VSC4.1 to coincide with this release as well so my storage vendor is ready to go. What I'm irritated with is that they still haven't resolved the automatic UNMAP problems. I see that they are allowing recovery of space from the guest OS, NetApp calls its Space Reclaimation with SnapDrive, but if I delete/svMotion on a thin LUN I will still have to use vmkfstools to recover the deleted space. This is a feature that was broken a version ago and then patched back in for manual usage. It should have been one of the most important things being worked on IMHO.

I also like the VDP application. Looks very promising, however 2TB of deduplicated space is just not enough. vMotion without shared storage is pretty huge. This is something that is pretty awesome for my remote sites that don't warrant shared storage.

blargoe

Any word on when 5.1 will be available to download?

jibbajabba

blargoe wrote: »

Any word on when 5.1 will be available to download?

September 11

dales wrote: »

For very small companies not "needing" shared storage to release the benefits might be the final push they need to get into the virtual world..

The Storage appliance is very expensive though - last time I checked at least $4k (haven't checked since GA of 5.0 though)

QHalo

I think he's referring to the vMotion no longer requiring a SAN/NAS device to facilitate the old requirement of shared storage.

jibbajabba

QHalo wrote: »

I think he's referring to the vMotion no longer requiring a SAN/NAS device to facilitate the old requirement of shared storage.

That's not new with 5.1 tho, the storage appliance came with 5.0 - the VMware one anyway - EMC / HP also have virtual VSAs ...

vSphere 5.1
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsphere/vmware-what-is-new-vsphere51.pdf

vSphere 5.1 Networking
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Whats-New-VMware-vSphere-51-Network-Technical-Whitepaper.pdf

vSphere 5.1 Platform
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Whats-New-VMware-vSphere-51-Platform-Technical-Whitepaper.pdf

vSphere 5.1 Storage
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Whats-New-VMware-vSphere-51-Storage-Technical-Whitepaper.pdf

vSphere 5.1 Performance
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Whats-New-VMware-vSphere-51-Performance-Technical-Whitepaper.pdf

vCloud Director 5.1
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Whats-New-VMware-vCloud-Director-51-Technical-Whitepaper.pdf

Quite a few new certs coming too

Certification Roadmap

VCP5-IaaS
VCP-Cloud
VCAP-CID

And VCP5 now seems to be VMware Certified Professional 5 – Datacenter Virtualization (VCP5-DV)

QHalo

Actually it is a new feature.

http://vmtoday.com/2012/08/vsphere-5-1-announcement-features-and-specifications/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vsphere-5-1-announcement-features-and-specifications

vSphere vMotion no longer requires shared storage. Since the feature first debuted, shared (SAN and then NFS) storage was a requirement. In vSphere 5.1, vSphere no longer requires shared storage.

it_consultant

Its not surprising that they are pushing this out quickly. MS Server 2012 Hyper-V no longer requires shared storage for their "Live Migration". I have tested it in the lab and it works OK.

jibbajabba

QHalo wrote: »

Actually it is a new feature.

Oh, I missunderstood ... So it doesn't even require a VSA any more .. neat ...

QHalo

That's OK. As I was typing that I re-read your post and figured that we weren't on the same page to begin with

:D

It was only a matter of time before they started messing with the certification routes. I think alot of it will change again before it's solidified.

jmritenour

I know the biggest feature my shop is looking forward to is the death of vRAM.

I've stated before, I almost wish VMware would move to a "renew every 3 year" certification model all across the board. I'd dare say more changes in vSphere in a 3 year span than Cisco IOS does in the same time frame.

jmritenour

Also, finally had a chance to look at this in depth. A lot of cool stuff, for sure, but I'm not digging the moving to the Web Client as being the core administrative interface. I realize the reasoning behind it, but still, I'd like the vSphere client to at least keep up with the Web GUI.

Kind of disappointed to see multi CPU fault tolerant VMs not among the new features. I keep hearing that it's on the roadmap, and that it had just barely missed making into 5.0. Was really hoping to see it in 5.1.

Overall, I'm just glad the vRAM licensing is gone.

QHalo

Most vendors are getting away from installed clients and moving to web. The problem I see is the vendors catching up. NetApp's VSC will still have to be run in the vSphere Client until they migrate to Flex and the Web client. Web clients are a way to abstract the OS of choice for the client. Something that many value for simply having a choice over running Windows.

dales

I think the web client is based on adobe flex so presumably it will require a browser add on of some kind, I'm not really up on web based tools.

Yes I was referring to the fact that you can vmotion between local datastores in 5.1. Its going to be a very interesting release indeed.

jibbajabba

A "proper" webclient would be nice so you don't need to install / download the client on a server where you "just" need to logon to a vCenter quickly. With the download link now re-directing to the sometimes very slow VMware server I'd wish this issue will be gone.

Whilst I can usually install the client on a server, even just temporarily, is fine, Flash is a big no no in our environment so we'll have to stick with the installable version ...

MentholMoose

it_consultant wrote: »

MS Server 2012 Hyper-V no longer requires shared storage for their "Live Migration".

It's also coming soon in XenServer 6.1. A release of XCP corresponding to XS 6.1 should have it as well. I believe it allows migrating a VM from any storage type (local/NFS/iSCSI/FC) on any host in any pool (AKA "cluster") to any storage on any host in any pool.

it_consultant

MentholMoose wrote: »

It's also coming soon in XenServer 6.1. A release of XCP corresponding to XS 6.1 should have it as well. I believe it allows migrating a VM from any storage type (local/NFS/iSCSI/FC) on any host in any pool (AKA "cluster") to any storage on any host in any pool.

The heat is on in the virtualization world. Before my current job vSphere was my exclusive hypervisor but I am in a Hyper-V shop now. The pending release of Server 2012 has really lit a fire under VMWARE - the changes in 5.1 constitute a major numbered release, but they can't do that since they just released 5. That might leave the impression they were holding technologies back.

jibbajabba

Yea I wonder how many features were intended for 6.x but they got cold feet ... Or chargeable features for that matter (i.e. no shared storage requirement considering they sell the storage appliance).

QHalo

At least with the storage appliance there are replicas of the data on other servers. With no shared storage, you still run the risk of a a single point of failure. Some smaller companies can live with that, other smaller ones won't. Yeah it seems like they're only hurting themselves but it has its use cases. Albeit I've never deployed it outside of the lab.

jibbajabba

Doesn't make much of a difference for smaller companies though. When I was working for a hosting company I have seen directors relying on a 'cheap as chips' webhosting account and companies who couldn't afford anything but a single disk in a server and yet claimed bankruptcy when something blew up. I am sure it has it's use cases and a lot of companies probably getting away with a single raid 1 and running 10s of VMs on it. In my experience a cheque book is sometimes only cracked open when they have their first downtime and loss of revenue.

QHalo

Don't get me wrong, my remote sites are living with this. Until I can fix it I just offload vm backups to USB drives at the sites. It's not pretty but it's at least something. This place was and still is a mess like this. But that will all soon be changing. It's amazing how long they've lasted this.

it_consultant

QHalo wrote: »

At least with the storage appliance there are replicas of the data on other servers. With no shared storage, you still run the risk of a a single point of failure. Some smaller companies can live with that, other smaller ones won't. Yeah it seems like they're only hurting themselves but it has its use cases. Albeit I've never deployed it outside of the lab.

I was going to launch my soapbox about how live migration (or vmotion) without shared storage really isn't a high availability solution but I decided not too. It is pretty amazing that we have gotten to the point where we can have a rapid enough memory snap between the two servers that we can keep the machine alive while the virtual disks are actually moving from one disparate array to another. When you install Hyper-V on Server 2012 it gives you a big warning about how you should still use shared storage if you want high availability.