Caution: Articles written for technical not grammatical accuracy, If poor grammar offends you proceed with caution ;-)
Here is some information about vSphere that I thought would be good to share with the world. As with everything else this is just a drop in the bucket. I’m currently working on putting together some upgrade videos and screenshots so take a look back and hopefully I will have them done by the end of the week.
Here is some interesting information about vSpehere and what it supports keep in mind these are just some notes I jotted down:
ESX 4 Hosts (vSphere Host)
256VM’s per host
64 Cores per host
512GB Ram per host
vSphere VMs (Hardware version 7)
8 vCPUs
256GB Ram
VMDirectPath I/O
Hot Plug Support (Supports CPU’s and Memory)
ESX 2.x and 3.x VM support
Paravirtual SCSI adapter
MSCS 2008
Persistent Reservations in vmkernel
LSI Logic SAS (Virtual SAS controller)
Networking Improvements
New iSCSI stack with 10-30% improved performance
TCPIP 2 Support (Based on FreeBSD 6.1 / IPv6 / locking and threading capabilties)
VMXNet3
MSI/MSI-X
Receive Side Scaling
VLAN offloading
VMware Directpath I/O
Storage Improvements
SCSI-3 Compliant
VMFS still SCSI-2
Target PortGroup Support (TPGS)
Asymmetric Logical Unit (ALUA)
Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA)
Updated iSCSI stack
Native SATA
Service Console
64-bit, 2.6 based Linux kernel compatible with RHEL 5.2
Supports for both 32bit and 64bit applications
root file system stored in VMDK
vmkernel runs and owns device drivers only 64-bit
Address Space layout Randomization (ASLR)
No Linux dev packagers and libraries
CPU
Enhanced Intel step down
Enhanced AMD Power Now
Security
Trusted Platform Module (TPM)
Digitally signed and validated modules
Memory integrity techniques with microprocessor capabilities to protect against buffer-overflow
Guided Consolidation
500 Simultaneous Physical Machines
Modular Plug-in can be installed on different machine
Coverter
Physical / Virtual / 3rd party
Server 2008 Support
Covert Hyper-V Machines to VM’s
Update Manager
ESX / ESXi and Virtual Appliance Upgrades
Upgrade Virtual Hardware
VMware Tools
Base Line Groups
Upgrade vcenter steps
No SQL 2000 Support
2.x & 3.x Upgade Path
Upgrade vCenter
Upgrade Update Manager
Use Upgrade Manager to Upgrade Hosts
Upgrade VMware Tools, then the VMware Hardware.
vSphere Host Update Utility
3.x to 4.x
Dosn’t Upgrade VMFS Datastores or VMs
Installs with vSphere client
Support Rollback for ESX only
Can be used to install patch releases to standalone hosts
Copies Script and ISO to ESX hosts reboots and installs