vSphere 5.5 – what I like from what’s new..

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Published on 6/9/2013 - Read in about 2 min (379 words)

Published under VMware and vSphere #ESX and ESXi #vSphere 5.5 #What's new

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With vSphere 5.5 being announced at VMworld San Francisco I was very eager to see what was new and after devouring all of the great blog posts out there of the guys in attendance I wanted to summarize in my own way the aspects I think are great!

**VMDK 2TB limitation removed! (also virtual mode RDMs)

** This has to be one of the best pieces of news as it has been in the rear trying to accommodate really large VMs (changes affect both VMFS and NFS)

<span style="color: #ff0000;"><span style="color: #ff0000;">IMPORTANT - You need to be running ESXi 5.5<br /> You cannot grow the VMDK "hot" the VMDK must be offline. Also you must use the web client to make the changes beyond 2TB ( you will get a funky error message if you try with the .NET client)</span></span>

vSphere Flash Read Cache
I have been keeping an eye (where possible) since I heard it announced way back as vFlash by Cormac hogan at a VMUG meeting last year, so I was chuffed to bits to see it made the cut in 5.5 (From what I have read though thus far it is not as straight forward to deploy and use as PernixData’s excellent product which I have had the pleasure in looking at and testing.)
**vSphere maximums

** While the days of needing to know the maximums for the exams have pretty much gone, VMware are still eager to impress and with HyperV hot on it’s tail VMware have certainly upped the ante..

[<img class="size-full wp-image-1921 aligncenter" alt="vsphere55-config-maximums" src="/images/2013/09/vsphere55-config-maximums.png" width="650" height="195" />

**VSAN

** Apparently its not a re-branding of VSA (which was not particularly popular) VSAN is a new way to make use of HOST mounted storage whether it be SSDs or HDDs and create a data store accross 8 Hosts (8 hosts being the present maximum)**

** This solution is quite appealing for some of what I do on a day to day basis, but I have yet to see how VMware will license it or which suite (if any it will fall into)

If you want a really great overview of all the new features and changes I would recommend reading the following blog post at WahlNetwork

Also VMware have the following PDF

vSphere 5.5 – what I like from what’s new..

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