Vmware has just announced vSphere 5.1 and it has alots of new features.
What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1?
• Larger virtual machines – Virtual machines can grow two
times larger than in any previous release to support even the
most advanced applications. Virtual machines can now have
up to 64 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) and 1TB of virtual RAM (vRAM).
• New virtual machine format – New features in the
virtual machine format (version 9) in vSphere 5.1 include
support for larger virtual machines, CPU performance
counters and virtual shared graphics acceleration designed
for enhanced performance.
Storage
• Flexible, space-efficient storage for virtual
desktop infrastructure (VDI) – A new disk format
enables the correct balance between space efficiency and I/O
throughput for the virtual desktop.
Network
• vSphere Distributed Switch – Enhancements such as
Network Health Check, Configuration Backup and Restore,
Roll Back and Recovery, and Link Aggregation Control
Protocol support and deliver more enterprise-class networking
functionality and a more robust foundation for cloud computing.
• Single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) support
– Support for SR-IOV optimizes performance for sophisticated
applications.
Availability
• vSphere vMotion® – Leverage the advantages of vMotion
(zero-downtime migration) without the need for shared
storage configurations. This new vMotion capability applies
to the entire network.
• vSphere Data Protection – Simple and cost effective
backup and recovery for virtual machines. vSphere Data
Protection is a newly architected solution based EMC
Avamar technology that allows admins to back up virtual
machine data to disk without the need of agents and with
built-in deduplication. This feature replaces the vSphere
Data Recovery product available with previous releases
of vSphere.
• vSphere Replication – vSphere Replication enables efficient
array-agnostic replication of virtual machine data over the LAN
or WAN. vSphere Replication simplifies management enabling
replication at the virtual machine level and enables RPOs as low
as 15 minutes.
• Zero-downtime upgrade for VMware Tools – After
you upgrade to the VMware Tools available with version 5.1, no
reboots will be required for subsequent VMware Tools upgrades.
Security
• VMware vShield Endpoint™ – Delivers a proven endpoint
security solution to any workload with an approach that is
simplified, efficient, and cloud-aware. vShield Endpoint enables
3rd party endpoint security solutions to eliminate the agent
footprint from the virtual machines, offload intelligence to a
security virtual appliance, and run scans with minimal impact.
Automation
• vSphere Storage DRS™ and Profile-Driven Storage
– New integration with VMware vCloud® Director™ enables
further storage efficiencies and automation in a private cloud
environment.
• vSphere Auto Deploy™ – Two new methods for deploying
new vSphere hosts to an environment make the Auto Deploy
process more highly available then ever before.
Management (with vCenter Server)
• vSphere Web Client –The vSphere Web Client is now the
core administrative interface for vSphere. This new flexible,
robust interface simplifies vSphere control through shortcut
navigation, custom tagging, enhanced scalability, and the
ability to manage from anywhere with Internet Explorer or
Firefox-enabled devices.
• vCenter Single Sign-On – Dramatically simplify vSphere
admin- istration by allowing users to log in once to access all
instances or layers of vCenter without the need for further
authentication.
• vCenter Orchestrator – Orchestrator simplifies installation
and configuration of the powerful workflow engine in vCenter
Server. Newly designed workflows enhance ease of use, and
can also be launched directly from the new vSphere Web Client.
Again the gap between VMware and Windows is close, they share much of the same features and limits for instance vCPU & vRAM.
Some features like SRV-IO and I can also see that vmware also has upgraded vMotion to have “shared-nothing-migration” as Windows has, still it remains to see how the pricing is going to be 