Sep 01

VMware vSphere 4.1 – What’s New

Tag: Infrastructure — September 1, 2010 @ 3:16 pm
Author:

Eric Inch

I enjoy learning, using and helping others through technology. This is my fourth year with C/D/H after many years of consulting for numerous small and mid-sized companies. I enjoy challenging projects and continual improvement in all areas. Most recently, I have been working to help grow the unified communications and virtualization practices at C/D/H.

When I’m not working, I enjoy spending time with my family. My girls keep me extremely busy but are always the highlight of my day.

For a more in-depth bio and a list of my areas of expertise, please visit http://www.cdh.com.

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Articles by Eric Inch

The latest industry leading virtualization solution by VMware, vSphere 4.1, was released on July 13th. I thought C/D/H Talks Tech would be the perfect place to cover some of its new features and capabilities:

EJI vSphere 41 - pic 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The “big 5” improvements, according to the Sr. Product Manager for vSphere, are:

  • Memory compression – the ability to compress physical memory pages to provide an extra layer in memory overcommit. Memory compression would come after transparent page sharing and ballooning, but before paging.
  • Storage I/O Control – create a policy to prioritize the use of storage for more critical workloads during periods of contention.
  • Network I/O Control – create network policies to prioritize bandwidth based on workloads and flow type (i.e. iSCSI, vMotion, VM).
  • vMotion speed and scale – vMotion now supports eight (8) simultaneous live migrations. That is eight times more than Microsoft Hyper-V.
  • Scalability – the configuration maximums for hosts and virtual machines per vCenter server, and virtual machines supported in a cluster, has been greatly increased. 

EJI vSphere 41 - pic 2

 

 

 

 Memory Compression

 

 

 

EJI vSphere 41 - pic 3

 

 

 

 

Storage I/O Control 

 

 

 

 

  

EJI vSphere 41 - pic 4

 

 

 

 

Network I/O Control

 

 

 

 

 

 

Additional improvements include:

  • Active Directory integration for ESX/ESXi – local host authentication can now use Active Directory user credentials.
  • DRS interoperability with HA and FT – high availability can talk to DRS to load balance existing virtual machines and ensure virtual machines brought back online after a host failure are placed on the best host and maximize available resources.
  • HA Healthcheck and Operational Status – visibility into the health and status of HA.
  • vStorage APIs – the ability to pass storage-related tasks directly to the storage array for improved speed. Works with Storage vMotion, provisioning new VMs, and thin provisioning.
  • vCenter Converter Hyper-V Import – directly import powered-off vhd format virtual machines currently residing on Microsoft Hyper-V.
  • Full Support for Windows Failover Clustering
  • Improved Configuration Maximums for HA
  • Load based teaming

Finally, an important note: This version will be the last time the original ESX is offered as an option. Going forward the only option will be the much smaller ESXi.

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