Presentation for the Denver VMware User Group on vSphere 5

1. What’s new in vSphere 5?
Dan Brinkmann
Solutions Architect at Lewan & Associates
http://blog.lewan.com / Twitter: @dbrinkmann

2. ABOUT LEWAN
• Customer-focused
• Superb engineering talent
• Cross technology offerings
and options
• Local talent and solutions,
global strength
• Process driven
• Satisfaction guaranteed

3. TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS
Innovative and reliable IT solutions are in our DNA.
Data Center
blade systems, stand-alone servers, server virtualization,
range of operating systems, information lifecycle
management, SAN/NAS, storage management, data de-
duplication, backup/recovery, archival, tape libraries
Network
voice over IP, call center, routing/switching,
telepresence/collaboration, wan acceleration, circuits,
wireless, firewalls, VPN, access control, IDS/IPS
Application Delivery & Applications
business productivity applications, email, directory services,
file/print, desktops, laptops, desktop virtualization, thin
clients, mobility, anti-virus, anti-spam

4. •ESXi only • New VAAI primitives
•ESXi CLI • vDS (span, LLDP, netflow)
•New virtual machine format • NIOC enhancements
•Auto deploy • Rewrite of HA
•Storage DRS • vMotion / DRS enhancements
•Profile-driven storage • ESXi firewall
•VMFS 5 • vSphere web client
•SIOC for NFS • vCenter linux appliance

5. • Convergence of the platform on ESXi
• No more service console
• Thin architecture
• Smaller security footprint
• Streamlined deployment and configuration
• Simplified patching and updating model

6. • ESXi Shell • vMA
• vCLI Appliance
• Rebranded Tech Support Mode
• PowerCLI
• Local and remote (SSH) • Windows CLI Tool
• vCLI
• ‗esxcli‘ Command Set
• Local and remote CLI
• New and improved in 5.0
• ‗vicfg‘ Command Set
• Remote CLI Only
• Other Commands:
• vmware-cmd, vmkfstools,
etc.
• vCLI available for Linux and
Windows

7. Commands Run Local Run Remote ESX/ESXi 4.x ESXi 5.x
esxcfg1 Yes No Yes No
esxcli2 Yes Yes No Yes
vicfg3 No Yes Yes Yes
vmware-cmd Yes Yes Yes Yes
vmkfstools Yes Yes Yes Yes
PowerCLI No Yes Yes Yes
1. ‗esxcfg‘ commands deprecated in 5.0 (replaced with esxcli)
2. ‗esxcli‘ in 4.x is *not* backward compatible with 5.0
3. ‗vicfg‘ used for remote CLI only

8. • 3-D graphics for Windows Aero
• USB 3.0 devices
• Support for 32 vCPU and 1TB RAM
• Multi-core vCPU support (licensing)
• If using vCD check this link:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cm
d=displayKC&externalId=2005932
• Upgrade VM tools then upgrade virtual hardware

9. • Works with Image Builder, vCenter Server, and Host Profiles
• How it works:
• PXE boot the server
• ESXi image profile loaded into host memory via Auto Deploy Server
• Configuration applied using Answer File / Host Profile
• Host placed/connected in vCenter
• Benefits
• No boot disk
• Quickly and easily deploy large numbers of ESXi hosts
• Share a standard ESXi image across many hosts
• Host image decoupled from the physical server
• Recover host w/out recovering hardware or having to restore from backup

10. • Storage DRS provides the following:
• Initial Placement of VMs and VMDKS based on
available space and I/O capacity.
• Load balancing between datastores in a datastore
cluster via Storage vMotion based on storage space
utilization.
• Load balancing via Storage vMotion based on I/O
metrics, i.e. latency.
• Storage DRS also includes Affinity/Anti-Affinity Rules for
VMs & VMDKs

11. Feature VMFS-3 VMFS-5
2TB+ VMFS Volumes Yes Yes
(using extents)
Support for 2TB+ Physical RDMs No Yes
Unified Block size (1MB) No Yes
Atomic Test & Set Enhancements No Yes
(part of VAAI, locking mechanism)
Sub-blocks for space efficiency 64KB (max ~3k) 8KB (max ~30k)
Small file support No 1KB

12. • Adds support for NFS when using Storage I/O Control
• Delivers same benefits now for NFS as existed in 4.1 for
iSCISI and FC

13. • New primitives for VAAI NAS (Full File Clone and Reserve
Space/thick VMDK) – note not shipped with ESXi 5.0
• Write Same, ATS, and Full Copy now fully T10 compliant in
ESXi 5.0
• New VAAI UnMap – dead space reclamation, monitoring of
space – Currently recommended to disable
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalI
d=2007427

14. • LLDP – standard based vendor neutral discovery protocol
• Netflow – collects IP traffic information, inter & intra VM
• Port Mirror – (SPAN) overcomes limitation of promiscuous
mode
• NOIC at VM level – create VM resource groups

15. • Network I/O control is a traffic management feature of vSphere Distributed
Switch (vDS)
• In a consolidated IO (10 gig) deployments this feature allows customer to
• Allocate Shares and Limits to different traffic types.
• Provide Isolation
• One traffic type should not dominate others
• Guarantee Service Levels when different traffic types compete
• Enhanced Network I/O Control — vSphere 5.0 builds on previous versions of
Network I/O Control feature by providing
• User-defined network resource pools
• New Host Based Replication Traffic Type
• QoS tagging

16. Total BW
iSCSI FT vMotion NFS
TCP/IP
V
M i
V O S N H
M T C F F B
VMWare vNetwork Distributed Switch I S T S R
O I
N
Network IO Control
10 GigE
V V V
M M M
R R R
G G G
1 2 3

17. • Complete re-write of vSphere HA
• Provides a foundation for increased scale and functionality
• Eliminates common issues (DNS resolution)
• Multiple Communication Paths
• Can leverage storage as well as the mgmt network for
communications
A fun read http://www.yellow-bricks.com/vmware-high-
availability-deepdiv/

18. • Every host runs a agent
• Referred to as ‗FDM‘ or Fault Domain Manger
• One of the agents within the cluster is chosen to
assume the role of the Master
• There is only one Master per cluster during normal
operations
• All other agents assume the role of Slaves
• There is no more Primary/Secondary concept with vSphere
HA

19. • Multi-NIC support – up to four 10Gbps or sixteen 1Gbps
• Support for higher latency networks – up to ~10ms
• DRS support Agent VMs and special handling of them

20. • Service oriented stateless firewall, restrict access to
services based on IP/subnet
• GUI for configuring firewall on ESXi 5.0 similar to classic
ESX firewall
• Host profile support for the ESXi 5.0 firewall
• Upgrades from Classic ESX to ESXi 5.0 will have firewall
settings preserved

21. The vSphere Web
Client runs within a
browser
Application Server
that provides a Flex Client
scalable back end Back End
The Query Service
vCenter in either Query obtains live data from
single or Service the core vCenter
Linked mode Server process
operation vCenter

22. • Pre-packaged 64 bit app running on SLES 11
• Optional support for remote Oracle DB
• Embedded DB – 5 hosts/50VMs
• External DC - <300 hosts/<3000VMs
• No support for: Linked mode (requires ADAM), IPv6,
vCenter Heartbeat, View Composer

23. • Dump Collector
• Syslog server

24. • ESXi 3.5-4.1
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=D
T_KB_1_1&externalId=1021801
• ESXi 5.0
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=D
T_KB_1_1&externalId=2004201
• Syslog is what ―I‖ would use
• Enabling syslog on ESXi 3.5 and 4.x
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalI
d=1016621
• Enabling syslog on ESXi 5.0
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalI
d=2003322

25. This was not a comprehensive list, check out
http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2011/08/vsphere-50-
features.html
http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2011/08/duncans-50-out-of-
140-vsphere-5.html