VMware vSphere 6.5 – Features – Quick Walk-through. This article is intended to share some of the impressive features of VMware vSphere 6.5. VMware has worked on security areas, User interfaces , Containers and vCenter appliance on their lasted package “VMware vSphere 6.5” and it’s worth upgrading to that. You have to obtain new licenses to deploy VMware vSphere 6.5 if you are on a version older than vSphere 6.0. For an example , Existing VMware vSphere 4.x and vSphere 5.x licenses will not work on vSphere 6.5.
Did you know,
CLOUD
- VMware vSphere 6.5 enables you to adopt and get a great hybrid cloud experience with VMware Cloud on AWS. (Amazon cloud). vSphere 6.5 provides a seamless and integrated experience across your on-premises data center and VMware Cloud on AWS.
VSAN
- You must use VMware vSphere 6.5 to use the latest release of vSAN which includes vSAN encryption.
User Interfaces & Third party Integration:
- VMware vSphere 6.5 improves customer experience with all new HTML 5 based web client and REST-based APIs for quick integration with third party tools. It provides exceptional management simplicity, operational efficiency and faster time to market.
vCenter Appliance
- Windows dependency free vCenter Server Appliance. It runs with VMware own OS “Photon” . Farewell to SUSE Linux as well.
- vCenter Server 6.5 includes native backup and restore for the vCenter Server Appliance. This new, out-of-the box functionality enables users to back up vCenter Server and Platform Services Controller appliances directly from the VAMI or API. The backup fully supports vCenter Server Appliance instances with both embedded and external Platform Services Controller instances.
- vCenter Server Appliance is the fundamental building block of the vSphere 6.5 environment. Comparing to vSphere 5.5, it can provide up to 2 to 3 times greater performance. It offers “One-click patching” , Robust Backup and recovery and High availability.
Security:
- vSphere 6.5 natively secures data, infrastructure and access at scale via its operationally simple, policy-driven model. Protecting all three areas is essential for digital transformation and the evolution of any given business. Some of the keys features like VM-level encryption , Secure Boot for ESXi and VMs and Audit-quality logging.
- If you enable Secure Boot on an ESXi host unsigned code is not allowed to be installed or run. All code is validated using digital certificates, starting with the UEFI firmware validating the boot loader for ESXi. This provides a root of trust starting with the system BIOS.
Proactive by predicting:
- Predictive load balancing, provided by Predictive DRS, is a game-changing new technology that leverages self-learning and predictive analytics provided by vSphere with Operations Management. This new capability in vSphere 6.5 eliminates resource contention by preemptively re-balancing workloads in advance of demand spikes.
Hardware Failures:
- Proactive High Availability in vSphere 6.5 triggers workloads to be live-migrated off servers where possible hardware failures are predicted to occur, over to ones that are in good standing. Proactive HA enables high availability for applications by moving workloads away from hardware that is likely to experience failure. The hardware signals to vSphere when possible problems are occurring, such as a malfunctioning fan or unreliable power supply.