Difference between ESX 5.0 and 5.

5
Let us review the new features added in VMware vSphere 5.5 and also some enhanced features from
older versions.
vSphere ESXi Hypervisor Enahncements

Hot Pluggable PCIe SSD Devices

Support for Reliable Memory Technology

Enhancements for CPU C-States

VMware vCenter Server Enhancements

VMware vSphere Web Client

VMware vCenter Server Appliance

vSphere App HA

Virtual MachineVirtual Machine Affinity Rules Enhancements

vSphere Big Data Extensions

vSphere Storage Enhancements

Support for 62TB VMDK

MSCS Updates

vSphere 5.1 Feature Updates

16GB E2E support

vSphere Flash Read Cache

vSphere Networking Enhancements

Link Aggregation Control Protocol Enhancements

Traffic Filtering

Quality of Service Tagging

40GB NIC support

vSphere ESXi Hypervisor Enahncements

Hot Pluggable PCie SSD Devices

In earlier versions VMware had a feature to swap storage devices such as SATA and SAS hard disks
without affecting the running virtual machines reducing the amount of downtime. With vSphere 5.5
users can now also hot-add or hot-remove an Solid State Disks (SSD) while a vSphere host is running.
Support for Reliable Memory Technology
There is a feature in CPU hardware which can provide the details of a portion of the memory which is
considered as more "reliable" with respect to to other sections of memory. vSphere 5.5 is utilizing this
feature to get memory information and runs the VMkerenl on this section of memory to reduce the
slightest probability of any memory crash or failure which in case could futher lead to adverse effects
to VMware Hypervisor.
Enhancements for CPU C-States
In vSphere 5.1 and earlier versions CPU P state was used which are responsible for lowering the CPU
multiplier and CPU voltage when there is no work load. But with vSphere 5.5 CPU C-State has been
introduced which has advanced CPU current lowering technologies. Another potential benefit of
reduced power consumption is with inherent increased performance.

VMware vCenter Server Enhancements

VMware vSphere Web Client

Enhanced features have been added to vSphere web client also providing full support for Mac OS X.
The vSphere web client also includes the following new features

Drag and Drop: Administrators now can drag and drop objects from the center panel onto the vSphere
inventory, enabling them to quickly perform bulk actions.
Filters: Administrators can now select properties on a list of displayed objects and selected filters to
meet specific search criteria. Displayed objects are dynamically updated to reflect the specific filters
selected.
Recent Items: Administrators spend most of their day working on a handful of objects. The new recent
items navigation aid enables them to navigate with ease, typically by using one click between their
most commonly used objects.

vCenter Server Appliance

With the release of vSphere 5.5, the vCenter Server Appliance addresses this with a re engineered,
embedded vPostgres database that can now support as many as 100 vSphere hosts or 3,000 virtual
machines (with appropriate sizing). With new scalability maximums and simplified vCenter Server
deployment and management, the vCenter Server Appliance offers an attractive alternative to the
Windows version of vCenter Server when planning a new installation of vCenter Server 5.5.
vSphere App HA
This is an additional feature added to vSphere 5.5. In earlier versions we had vSphere HA which
enabled virtual machine monitoring and in case of any heart beat failures within a given amount of
time the vShphere HA would reset the vm. But using vSphere App HA any critical application service
and be monitored and in case of any failure the application or the virtual machine can be restarted.
Virtual MachineVirtual Machine Affinity Rules Enhancements
As we know the usage of DRS in earlier version of VMware vSphere but in vSphere 5.5 an additional
rule is added to DRS where user can define the virtual machines which should be kept together on
same host or separate hosts. This rule is termed as virtual machinevirtual machine anti affinity rule.
So now before attempting to move any vm during a resource outage this rule plays its part and
migrates the vm accordingly.
VMware vSphere Data Protection Enhancements
New enhanced features has been added to VMware vpshere Data Protection which is a backup and
recovery solution for VMware virtual machines. The following enhancements were made

Direct-to-host emergency restore:

Backup and restore of individual virtual machine hard disks (.vmdk files): Individual .vmdk
files can be selected for backup and restore operations.

Replication to EMC Avamar

Flexible storage placement

Mounting of existing backup data storage to new appliance

Scheduling granularity
vSphere Big Data Extensions
BDE is a tool that enables administrators to deploy and manage Hadoop clusters on vSphere from a
familiar vSphere Web Client interface.
BDE performs the following functions on the virtual Hadoop clusters it manages:

Creates, deletes, starts, stops and resizes clusters

Controls resource usage of Hadoop clusters

Specifies physical server topology information

Manages the Hadoop distributions available to BDE users

Automatically scales
vSphere Storage Enhancements

Support for 62TB VMDK

VMware is increasing the maximum size of a virtual machine disk file (VMDK) in vSphere 5.5. The
previous limit was 2TB512 bytes. The new limit is 62TB. The maximum size of a virtual Raw Device
Mapping (RDM) is also increasing, from 2TB512 bytes to 62TB. Virtual machine snapshots also
support this new size for delta disks that are created when a snapshot is taken of the virtual machine.
Enhancements in MSCS
In vSphere 5.5, VMware supports the following features related to Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS):

Microsoft Windows 2012

Round-robin path policy for shared storage

iSCSI protocol for shared storage

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol for shared storage

16GB E2E Support

In vSphere 5.1, VMware introduced support to run these HBAs at 16Gb. However, there is no support
for full, end-to-end 16Gb connectivity from host to array. To get full bandwidth, a number of 8Gb
connections must be created from the switch to the storage array.
In vSphere 5.5, VMware introduces 16Gb end-to-end FC support. Both the HBAs and array controllers
can run at 16Gb as long as the FC switch between the initiator and target supports it.

vSphere Networking Enhancements

Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) Enhancements

LACP is a method to bundle several physical network links to form logical channel for increased
bandwidth and redunancy purposes. The fllowing key enhancements are available in vSPhere
Distributed Switch with vSphere 5.5:

22 new hashing algorith options are available

64 LAG (Link Aggregation Group) per host

Traffic Filtering
Traffic filtering is the ability to filter packets based on the various parameters of the packet header.
This capability is also referred to as access control lists (ACLs), and it is used to provide port-level
security.
Quality of Service tagging
QOS is responsible for responsible for differentiating traffic importance and helps reserving bandwidth
accordingly. VMware has supported 802.1p tagging on VDS since vSphere 5.1. The 802.1p tag is
inserted in the Ethernet header before the packet is sent out on the physical network. In vSphere 5.5,
the DSCP marking support enables users to insert tags in the IP header. IP headerlevel tagging helps
in layer 3 environments, where physical routers function better with an IP header tag than with an
Ethernet header tag.
40GB NIC Support
Support for 40GB NICs on the vSphere platform enables users to take advantage of higher bandwidth
pipesto the servers.

Summary
So this was a brief article on few of the enhancements and new features added in vSphere 5.5 as
compared to earlier versions. To summarize this article I have separated the points in two sub sections
as shown below

New features in vSphere 5.5

Hot plug SSD PCIe devices

vSphere App HA

Reliable memory Technology:

vSphere DRS virtual machinevirtual machine affinity rule

vSphere Big Data Extensions

Support for 62TB VMDK

16GB E2E support

40GB NIC Support

Enhanced features in vSphere 5.5

Enhancements to CPU C-states

Expanded virtual graphics support

vSphere Web Client platform support and UI improvements

MSCS updates

PDL AutoRemove

Improved LACP capabilities

Traffic filtering

Quality of Service tagging

Features

vSphere 5.1

vSphere 5.5

Physical CPUs per host

160

320

Physical RAM per host

2 TB

4 TB

NUMA nodes per host

16

2048

4096

VMDK Size

2TB

62 TB

Max Size of Virtual RDM

2TB

62 TB

10

No

yes

32 GB

unlimited

8-way virtual SMP

8-way virtual SMP

Support to run these

HBAs at 16Gb. However,
there is no support for
full, end-to-end 16Gb
connectivity from host to
array.

Yes

APP HA

No

Yes

vFlash Read Cache support

No

Yes

VMware VSAN support

No

Yes

only NVIDIA

NVIDIA, AMD and Intel GPU

5 Hosts and 50 Virtual

Machines

100 Hosts and 3000 Virtual

Machines

Microsoft Windows 2012 Cluster Support

No

Yes

PDL (Permanent Device Loss) AutoRemove

No

Intoduced in vSphere 5.5

Maximum vCPUs per host

VM Hardware Version
40 GBps physical Adapter support
ESXi Free version RAM limit
ESXi Free version maximum vSMP

16 GB fibre channel End-to-End support

Expanded v-GPU and G-GPU support

vCenter Server Appliance With
Embedded Database support upto

Graphics acceleration support for Linux

Guest OS

No

Yes

Hot-pluggable SSDPCIe devices

No

Yes

Support for Reliable Memory Technology

No

Yes

Host power management

leveraged only the
performance state (Pstate), which kept the
processor running at a
lower frequency and
voltage

Processor power state (Cstate)

also is used, providing
additional power savings
and increased Performance

No

Yes

vSphere Big Data Extensions

No

Yes

SATA-based virtual device nodes via

AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface)
support

No

Yes (Support upto 120

devices per VM)

one LACP group per

distributed switch

Supports up to 64

vSphere Replication kept

only the most recent copy
of a virtual machine

Version 5.5 can keep up to

24 historical snapshots

CPU C-state Enhancement

LSI SAS support for Oracle Solaris 11 OS

Improved LACP Support

Multiple point-in-time replicas