Lors de la prochaine sortie de la version 4.1 de VMware vSphere (vers la fin de l’année normalement), de nouveaux maximums seront à prendre à compte comparativement aux valeurs que nous connaissons actuellement sur la version 4.0 de vSphere. Voici la liste des ces nouveaux maximums atteints avec vSphere 4.1 :

– 3,000 virtual machines per cluster (compared to 1,280 in vSphere 4.0)
– 1,000 hosts per vCenter Server (compared to 300)
– 15,000 registered VMs per vCenter Server (compared to 4,500)
– 10,000 concurrently powered-on VMs per vCenter Server (compared to 3,000)
– 120 concurrent Virtual Infrastructure Clients per vCenter Server (compared to 30)
– 500 hosts per virtual Datacenter object (compared to 100)
– 5,000 virtual machines per virtual Datacenter object (compared to 2,500)

Encore une fois VMware nous montre qu’il est toujours possible de repousser les limites mises en place avec sa suite vSphere avec sa prochaine version 4.1 ; Pour toutes les architectures existantes ou à venir, cela permettra encore plus de flexibilité. Merci VMware !!

Voici la liste des nouvelles fonctionnalités annoncées dans la prochaine version de VMware vSphere 4.1 (qui devrait sortir en fin d’année normalement) :

• Storage I/O can be shaped by I/O shares and limits through the new Storage I/O Control quality of service (QoS) feature
• Network I/O can be partitioned through a new QoS engine that distinguish between virtual machines, vMotion, Fault Tolerance (FT) and IP storage traffic.

• Memory compression will allow to compress RAM pages instead of swapping on disk, improving virtual machines performance.
• Distribute Resource Scheduling (DRS) now can follow affinity rules defining a subset of hosts where a virtual machine can be placed
• Virtual sockets can now have multiple virtual CPUs. Each virtual CPU will appear as a single core in the guest operating system.
• A team physical network interface cards in a vNetwork Distributed Switch can now dynamically load balance traffic.
• Health check status and operational dashboard are available for HA configurations.
• vSphere Client is no more part of the ESX and ESXi installation packages. At the end of the installation process administrators are redirected online to download the client.
• ESXi installation can be scripted. The script can start from a CD or over a PXE boot source, and can install the hypervisor on local or remote disks.
• ESX can boot from iSCSI targets (support for iBFT)
• NFS performance stats are included in esxtop and vCenter Server, as well as through the vSphere SDK.
• Virtual machines serial ports redirection over the network
• Support for up to 4 vMotion concurrent live migrations in 1GbE networks and up to 8 concurrent live migrations in 10GbE networks
• Support for USB pass-through (virtual machines can use ESX/ESXi local USB devices)
• Support for administrator password change in Host Profiles
• Support for FT in DRS clusters with with Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC)
• Support for iSCSI TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE) network interface cards (both 10GB an 1GB)
• Support for 8GB Fibre Chanell HBAs
• Support for IPsec on IPv6 network configurations
• Support for multiple Data Recovery virtual appliances
• Support for Microsoft Volume Shadow Service (VSS) in Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 guest operating systems for vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP)
• Update Manager (VUM) can now patch additional 3rd party modules for ESX (like EMC PowerPath)
• Virtual to Virtual (V2) migration for offline Hyper-V virtual machines in vCenter Converter
• ESX and ESXi direct support for Microsoft Active Directory through Likewise technology integration
• Support for Intel Xeon 7500 / 5600 / 3600 CPU series (this includes EVC support)
• Support for AMD Opteron 4000 / 6000 CPU series (this includes EVC support)

Dès que j’aurai plus d’infos concernant la date de sortie définitive de la version 4.1 de vSphere, je vous en ferai part dans un prochain post.