vSphere 6.0 - Released Today!

For some time now it has been anticipated, but today is the day!  As of this morning vSphere 6.0 is Generally available.  I am not going to lie, it has been a difficult task trying to keep quiet on some of the amazing new features.  I think that some of my personal top 10 are fixed in it as well....which some of them have been a long time coming, but will serve to make the vSphere suite even better.

The following are some of the best updates included in the release:

Compute 

• Increased Scalability – Increased configuration maximums: Virtual machines support up to 128 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) and 4TB virtual RAM (vRAM). Hosts support up to 480 CPU and 12TB of RAM, 2,048 virtual machines per host, and 64 nodes per cluster. 
• Expanded Support – Expanded support for the latest x86 chip sets, devices, drivers, and guest operating systems. 
• Amazing Graphics – NVIDIA GRID™ vGPU™ delivers the full benefits of NVIDIA hardware-accelerated graphics to virtualized solutions. 
• Instant Clone – Technology, built in vSphere 6.0, that lays that foundation to rapidly clone and deploy virtual machines, as much as 10x faster than what is currently possible today.

Storage

• vSphere Virtual Volumes -  enables your external storage arrays to become VM-aware. Storage Policy-Based Management (SPBM) allows common management across storage tiers and dynamic storage class of service automation. Together they enable exact combinations of data services (such as clones and snapshots) to be instantiated more efficiently on a per VM basis. 
• Virtual SAN 6.0 - Improvements to Virtual SAN system which allow for greater scalability of the environment, including all Flash Support, JBOD Support, 64 Host clusters and the ability to set failure domains

Network

• Network IO Control – New support for per-VM Distributed vSwitch bandwidth reservations to guarantee isolation and enforce limits on bandwidth. 
• Multicast Snooping - Supports IGMP snooping for IPv4 packet and MLD snooping for IPv6 packets in VDS. Improves performance and scale with multicast traffic. 
• Multiple TCP/IP stack for vMotion - Allows vMotion traffic a dedicated networking stack. Simplifies IP address management with a dedicated default gateway for vMotion traffic.

Availability

• vMotion Enhancements – Perform non-disruptive live migration of workloads across distributed switches and vCenter Servers and over distances of up to 100ms RTT. The astonishing 10x increase in RTT offered in long-distance vMotion now makes it possible for data centers physically located in New York and London to migrate live workloads between one another.
• Replication-Assisted vMotion – Enables customers, with active-active replication set up between two sites, to perform a more efficient vMotion resulting in huge time and resource savings – as much as 95 percent more efficient depending on the size of the data. 
• Fault Tolerance (up to 4-vCPUs) – Expanded support for software based fault tolerance for workloads with up to 4 virtual CPUs. 

Management

• Content Library – Centralized repository that provides simple and effective management for content including virtual machine templates, ISO images and scripts. With vSphere Content Library, it is now possible to store and manage content from a central location and share through a publish/subscribe model. 
• Cross-vCenter Clone and Migration – Copy and move virtual machines between hosts on different vCenter Servers in a single action. 
• Enhanced User Interface – Web Client is more responsive, more intuitive, and more streamlined than ever before.
• Enhanced Linked Mode - Replaces Linked mode which used to use Microsoft ADS, and has been completely built in house at VMware.  This allows for a single pane of glass between multiple vCenter Servers as well as replication of data between them such as licenses.
• VMware Certificate Authority - Allows for signed certificates for the entire management component infrastructure.  With this technology implementing signed CA certificate infrastructures is simplified.

I am sure there will be a flurry of other information coming out soon.  I in fact will be posting next week on the VMware Consulting blog about the new Platform Services Controller Architecture, which is sure to be a popular topic as designs begin to flow for it!