This week at VMworld 2013, VMware’s CEO Pat Gelsinger announced the new features of vSphere 5.5. The entire list of updates can be found in the “What’s New?” file from VMware but here are some of the highlights.

• Single Sign on was completely re-written.  I would bet that the #1 reason that users didn’t adopt vSphere 5.1 release was due to issues with single sign on.  VMware re-wrote this code not only fix the bugs, but make the entire experience better.  This feature was a necessity for VMware to move forward with the vSphere platform.
• Additional GPU Support.  This may be a big deal for some companies who are afraid to switch to a VDI infrastructure because of limited graphics processors.
• 62 TB VMDK’s now supported.  Bigger is always better… right?  This could be a very big deal.  I know several clients who got into a jam when they created their 2TB vmdks only to find out that they couldn’t snapshot them or expand the disks any further.  62TBs should suffice for now! 🙂
• Flash Read Cache.  VMware now natively supports using SSD’s as read cache for specific VMDK files.  In the past vSphere could use local SSDs for host cache.  This was used to mitigate the issue of swapping to disk.  If you have to swap to disk SSD is at least better than spinning disks right?  Well now you can use local host SSDs as a read cache for an entire VM or maybe just a single disk.
• vSphere vCenter virtual Appliance can now support up to 5000 virtual machines.  I’m having fewer and fewer reasons to build out an entire VM now.  This makes me want to just deploy the vApp and be done with the whole process.
• Application HA.  vSphere has been able to provide virtual machine high availability for a while now, but with the release of 5.5 they can also take action against guest services as well.

Additional Announcements

• VMware NSX will be taking over for vCNS (vCloud Networking and Security).  I was told that vCNS will still be available in 5.5 but future iterations would be inside the NSX Product.  NSX uses the VXLAN protocols to virtualize the physical infrastructure.  ESXi hosts will now be able to manage internal routing, switching and firewalls.

• Virtual SAN is a new product that will allow you to take advantage of ESXi host local storage.  It requires a new vmkernal port which acts much like FT or vMotion does.  The SAN Traffic is then dedicated to that vmkernal port.  This is a nice feature for companies who want some virtualization benefits without the cost of a SAN, or decide they want to try out one of the new Micron Cards in their servers instead of going to a traditional shared storage approach.