Whats new in vSphere 4.1

Шпионы из секретного бункера раскрывают тайны новой версии гипервизора VMware vSphere 4.1.
Операционная система для ЦОД продолжает повышать эффективность инфраструктуры x86.

Установка и развертывание

• Automated Deployment of ESXi Images using PXE Boot — With VMware Auto Deploy, you can rapidly deploy and configure large numbers of ESXi hosts using the PXE boot infrastructure. The Auto Deploy virtual appliance provides all the components necessary to automate deployment of ESXi to servers configured to PXE boot. See the Administration Automation Documentation page.
• Scripted Install for ESXi — Scripted installation of ESXi to local and remote disks allows rapid deployment of ESXi to many machines. You can start the scripted installation with a CD-ROM drive or over the network using PXE booting. You cannot use scripted installation to install ESXi to a USB device.

Хранение данных

• Storage I/O Control — This feature provides quality-of-service capabilities for storage I/O, in the form of I/O shares and limits that are enforced across all virtual machines accessing each datastore, regardless of which host they are running on.
• Storage Performance Statistics — vSphere 4.1 offers enhanced visibility into storage throughput and latency of hosts and virtual machines, and aids in troubleshooting storage performance issues. NFS statistics are now available in vCenter Server performance charts, as well as esxtop. New statistics for virtual machine for VMDK and datastore provide virtual machine insight. All statistics are available through the vSphere SDK.

Сеть

• Network I/O Traffic Management — Traffic-management controls allow flexible partitioning of physical NIC bandwidth between different traffic types, including virtual machine, vMotion, FT, and IP storage traffic.
• IPv6 Enhancements — IPv6 in ESX supports Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) and Internet Key Exchange (IKEv2).
  

Доступность

• VMware HA Healthcheck Status — HA provides an ongoing healthcheck facility to ensure that the required cluster configuration is met at all times. Deviations from the required configuration result in an event or alarm on the cluster within the vCenter Server inventory.
• VMware HA Operational Status — The HA dashboard in the vSphere Client provides a new detailed window called Cluster Operational Status, which displays more information about the current HA operational status, including the specific status and errors for each host in the HA cluster.
• Fault Tolerance (FT) Enhancements — FT virtual machines are now fully interoperable with DRS when EVC is enabled in the cluster, allowing DRS to place FT Primary VMs and load balance FT Primary and Secondary VMs. An FT-specific versioning-control mechanism ensures that hosts are fully compatible with running FT Primary and Secondary VMs, which eliminates the need to rely on ESX build number consistency. vSphere 4.1 differentiates between events that are logged for a Primary VM from those that are logged for its Secondary VM, and reports why a host might not support FT. In addition, you can disable VMware HA when FT virtual machines are deployed in a cluster.
• Concurrent VMware Data Recovery Sessions — vSphere 4.1 provides the ability to concurrently manage multiple VMware Data Recovery appliances.

Управляемость

• Access Virtual Machine Serial Ports Over the Network— You can redirect virtual machine serial ports over a standard network link in vSphere 4.1. This enables solutions such as third-party virtual serial port concentrators for virtual machine serial console management or monitoring.
• vCenter Converter Hyper-V Import — vCenter Converter allows users to point to a Hyper-V machine. Converter displays the virtual machines running on the Hyper-V system, and users can select a powered-off virtual machine to import to a VMware destination.
• Enhancements to Host Profiles — Host Profiles provides flexibility by allowing you to roll out administrator password changes in vSphere 4.1. Enhancements also include improved Cisco Nexus 1000V support and PCI device ordering configuration.
• Unattended Authentication in vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) — vMA 4.1 offers improved authentication capability, including integration with Active Directory and command-line interface commands to configure the connection.
• Updated Deployment Environment in vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) — The updated deployment environment in vMA 4.1 is fully compatible with vMA 4.0. A significant change is the transition from RHEL to CentOS.
• vCenter Orchestrator Workflows — vCenter Orchestrator offers new workflows to automate vCenter Server management tasks, including managing snapshots, locating orphaned VMDK files, converting multiple disks from thick to thin provisioning, and bulk operations such as detaching removable media from all virtual machines in vCenter Server.
• Improved Support for Handling Recalled Patches in vCenter Update Manager — Update Manager 4.1 immediately sends critical notifications about recalled ESX and related patches. In addition, Update Manager prevents you from installing a recalled patch that you might have already downloaded. This feature also helps you identify hosts where recalled patches might already be installed.

Улучшения платформы

• DRS Virtual Machine Host Affinity Rules — DRS provides the ability to set constraints that restrict placement of a virtual machine to a subset of hosts in a cluster. This feature is useful for enforcing host-based ISV licensing models, as well as keeping sets of virtual machines on different racks or blade systems for availability reasons.
• Memory Compression — Compressed memory is a new level of the memory hierarchy, between RAM and disk. Slower than memory, but much faster than disk, this feature improves the performance of virtual machines when memory is under contention, because less virtual memory is swapped to disk as a result.
• vMotion Enhancements — In vSphere 4.1, vMotion enhancements significantly reduce the overall time for host evacuations, with support for more simultaneous virtual machine migrations and faster individual virtual machine migrations. The result is a performance improvement of up to 8x for an individual virtual machine migration, and support for four to eight simultaneous vMotion migrations per host, depending on the vMotion network adapter (1GbE or 10GbE respectively).
• 8GB Fibre Channel Support — vSphere 4.1 supports 8GB Fibre Channel storage arrays. You can deploy ESX and ESXi with 8GB end-to-end Fibre Channel SANs.
• ESXi Active Directory Integration — Integration with Microsoft Active Directory allows seamless user authentication on ESXi. You can maintain users and groups in Active Directory for centralized user management and you can assign privileges to users or groups on ESXi hosts. Active Directory integration on ESX is also supported using the same interface. In vSphere 4.1, integration with Active Directory allows you to roll out permission rules to hosts using Host Profiles.
• Configuring USB Device Passthrough from an ESX/ESXi Host to a Virtual Machine — Virtual machines can be configured to use USB devices that are connected to the ESX host on which the virtual machine is running. However, you cannot use vMotion to migrate a virtual machine that has a connected USB device. The device must be disconnected from the virtual machine before it can be migrated. You can connect up to 20 USB devices to a virtual machine.
• Improvements in Enhanced vMotion Compatibility — vSphere 4.1 includes an AMD Opteron Generation 3 without 3DNow!™ EVC mode that prepares clusters for vMotion compatibility with future AMD processors. EVC also provides numerous usability improvements, including the display of EVC modes for virtual machines, more timely error detection, better error messages, and reduced need to restart virtual machines.

Поддержка решений партнеров

• Enablement of Intel Xeon Processor 7500 Series, Intel Xeon Processor 5600 Series, and Intel Xeon Processor 3600 Series — vSphere 4.1 supports the Intel Xeon Processor 7500 Series, Intel Xeon Processor 5600 Series, and Intel Xeon Processor 3600 Series. Support includes Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) capabilities. For more information on previous processor families supported by Enhanced vMotion, see Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support (KB 1003212).
• Enablement of AMD Opteron Processor 4000 Series and AMD Opteron Processor 6000 Series — vSphere 4.1 supports the AMD Opteron Processor 4000 Series and AMD Opteron Processor 6000 Series. Support includes Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) capabilities. For more information on previous processor families supported by Enhanced vMotion, see Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support (KB 1003212).
• vCenter Update Manager Support for Provisioning, Patching, and Upgrading EMC’s ESX PowerPath Module — vCenter Update Manager can provision, patch, and upgrade third-party modules that you can install on ESX, such as EMC’s PowerPath multipathing software. Using the capability of Update Manager to set policies using the Baseline construct and the comprehensive Compliance Dashboard, you can simplify provisioning, patching, and upgrade of the PowerPath module at scale.
• User-configurable Number of Virtual CPUs per Virtual Socket — You can configure virtual machines to have multiple virtual CPUs reside in a single virtual socket, with each virtual CPU appearing to the guest operating system as a single core. Previously, virtual machines were restricted to having only one virtual CPU per virtual socket.

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