vSphere 6.5 – Dailyhypervisor

Loving the list of new features in vSPjere 6.5? Thinking about digging in and upgrading your lab or other environment? Well if that environment is running NSX you will want to wait just a little longer. vSphere 6.5 is currently not compatible with NSX including 6.1.x and 6.2.x. See KB 2147548 for more details.

Now I have nothing official to say on this, but as you might expect I’m sure this will be resolved once a new version of NSX drops. We have all been there before where we just got the GA announcement of vSphere and rushed to upgrade our virtual labs and oh wait crap, NSX is not supported. This is nothing new this has been the case for last few releases if you recall. You may remember reading this article about vSPhere 6.

This is super exciting news. There are two features in particular that I am very excited to see in vSphere 6.5.

vSphere Integrated Containers – Run docker containers natively (well almost) on top of vSphere. VIC as it has been coined allows you to use the Docker API to spin up Docker containers inside a vSphere VM container. The vSphere VM container runs a super small version of PhotonOS that allows the container to run inside the VM container. This now allows you to run Docker containers with all the benefits of vSphere VM’s with the exception of NSX at the moment. However your containersa can take advantage of another new much anticipated feature.

vSphere Predictive DRS – Predictive DRS is a game-changing new technology that leverages self-learning and predictive analytics provided by vRealize Operations. It learns your environment and based on usage patterns, preemptively rebalances your workloads in advance of upcoming demands and spikes. This ensures your applications remain performant and your workloads get all the resources they need.

These aren’t the only exciting new features, but they are certainly two of my favorites. Among the other new features are:

Scale Enhancements – New configuration maximums to support even the largest app environments
VMware vCenter Server® Appliance – The single control center and core building block for vSphere
vCenter Server® High Availability – Native vCenter Server high availability solution
vCenter Server Backup and Restore – Native vCenter Server Backup and Restore
vCenter Server Appliance Tool – Single step migration and upgrade of existing vCenter Server to vCenter Server Appliance
REST APIs – Simple, modern developer-friendly APIs
vSphere Client – HTML5-based GUI that ensures fast performance and cross-platform compatibility
Security-at-Scale – Policy-driven security that makes securing infrastructure operationally simple
Encryption – VM-level encryption protects unauthorized data access both at-rest and in-motion
Audit-quality logging – Enhanced logging that provides forensic information about user actions
Secure Boot – Protection for both the hypervisor and guest operating system by ensuring images have not been tampered with and preventing loading of unauthorized components
Cross-Cloud vMotion® –Live migrate workloads between VMware based clouds ( Handy feature for the new Amazon and VMware partnership)
Virtual Volumes™ Replication – Native array virtual volumes replication