Tag: ITQ

VMware vSphere 6.5 General Availability

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vSphere 6.5 - Logo

VMware vSphere 6.5 is General Available (GA) so this means it is available for download on the VMware website!

For those who like to try out vSphere 6.5. The download mirrors are listed below.

It might be a good idea to wait a couple of months or even until vSphere 6.5 Update 1 is released to put into production.

For those who are interested. In vSphere 6.5 the following features are now available. Keep in mind there are a lot of more items new or changed in this release. I just listed the most interesting:

  • VMware vCenter Appliance Enhancements:
    • Migration Tool
    • Improved appliance management
    • Native high availability
    • Native backup and restore
    • New API Explorer
  • VMware vCenter Administrative Interfaces:
    • vSphere Web Client enhancements
    • vSphere Web Client integration with vSphere Update Manager
    • vSphere Web Client integration with Host Profiles
    • vSphere Web Client integration with Auto Deploy
    • vSphere Client is onboard (HTML5)
  • vSphere 6.5 – Availability Enhancements
    • Proactive HA
    • VMware vSphere High Availability Orchestrated Restart
    • vSphere HA Admission Control Improvements
    • vSphere HA Support for NVIDIA GRID vGPU Configured VMs
  • vSphere 6.5 – Fault Tolerance Enhancements
    • Improved integration with vSphere DRS
    • Reduced network latency
    • Support for multiple port groups
  • vSphere 6.5 – Storage Enhancements
    • Advanced Format Drives and 512e Mode
    • Automated UNMAP
    • LUN Scalability (maximum number of LUNs to 256 and paths to 1,024)
    • NFS 4.1 Support
    • Software iSCSI Static Routing Support
  • vSphere 6.5 – Network Enhancements
    • Dedicated Gateways for VMkernel Network Adapter
    • SR-IOV Provisioning
  • vSphere 6.5 – Security
    • Virtual Machine Encryption
    • Encrypted vMotion
    • Secure boot support
    • Enhanced logging

vSphere 6.5 Announcement

The official announcement can be found on the following page (Link: VMware Announces General Availability of vSphere 6.5). The complete overview can be found in the VMware White Paper – vSphere 6.5 – What’s New PDF file.

vSphere 6.5 Download

Here are the download locations on the VMware.com website.

VMware vSphere 6.5 Announced

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At VMworld 2016 the next version of vSphere has been announced by Pat Gelsinger. The new version is called VMware vSphere 6.5 and introduces a lot of new features.

As I see it VMware has introduced some long-awaited features:

  • Native High Availability for the vCSA appliance
  • The vSphere Client is HTML5-based
  • VMFS allows for 512 devices and 2000 paths
  • vMotion supports traffic encryption
  • VMware Update Manager (VUM) integrated into the VCSA appliance

A couple of days after the announcement a lot of articles have been published on the internet. I have listed some of the most interesting that every VMware Engineer should read: