Comparing vSphere 5.x to vSphere 6.0

VMware vSphere 5.0

VMware vSphere 5.1

VMware vSphere 5.5

VMware vSphere 6.0

ESXi

• Compatibility 5.0 (aka Virtual Hardware 8)
  • 32 vCPUs / 1TB RAM
  • Software based 3D graphics
  • USB 3.0 and EFI BIOS Support
• Swap to SSD
• Unified CLI (ESXCLI)
• ESXi Shell and ESXi Firewall
• vSphere Auto Deploy
• Image Builder CLI

• Compatibility 5.1 (Virtual Hardware 9)
  • 64 vCPUs / 1TB RAM
  • Hardware based 3D graphics
  • Hardware Assisted Virtualization
  • Virtualized CPU Performance Counters
• Assign Full Admin Privileges to Named Users
• Auto Deploy Stateless Caching and Stateful Installs

• Compatibility 5.5 (Virtual Hardware 10)
  • Improved 3D graphics Support
  • AHCI Controller Support
• Host Configuration Maximums Doubled for CPU, Memory, NUMA Nodes, and vCPU
• Support for Hot-Pluggable PCI-e SSD
• Support for CPU C-States
• Reliable Memory Technology

• Compatibility 6.0 (Virtual Hardware 11)
  • 128 vCPUs / 4TB vRAM
  • WDDM 1.1 GDI graphics acceleration
  • Ability to remove all serial and parallel ports
  • Hot-add RAM now vNUMA aware
• Support for 480 CPUs and 12TB RAM
• Support for 2048 virtual machines per host
• vMotion support for MSFT Clusters

vCenter Server

• Web Client Technology
• vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)
• vCenter Heartbeat Enhancements

• vCenter Single Sign-On
• Inventory Service Tagging
• New vSphere Web Client
• Ability to vMotion without Shared Storage
• Database Performance Improvements

• Single Sign-On
  • Improved Architecture
  • Native Active Directory Support
• vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)
  • 300 hosts/1000 VM with embedded DB
• vSphere App HA

• 64 host clusters, 6000 virtual machines per cluster
• vMotion Enhancements
  • vMotion across vCenters
  • vMotion across Virtual Switches
  • Long Distance vMotion
• Platform Services Controller
  • Common Services for vCloud Suite, includes SSO, certificate and licensing
  • Enables Enhanced Linked Mode
• vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)
  • Same Scale as Windows Installable vCenter Server (1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machiens)
• Content Library

Storage

• VMFS 5
• Storage DRS
• Profile Driven Storage
• vSphere APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA)
• Enhanced VAAI Primitives:
  • Enhanced T10 Compliancy
  • Thin provisioned storage arrays
  • Hardware acceleration on NAS
• Storage I/O Control (SIOC) compatibility with NFS
• Storage vMotion support for snapshots and linked clones
• Support for Software FCoE Driver
• vSphere Replication (SRM only)

• VMFS 5 File Share Limit increased to 32
• Space Efficient Sparse Virtual Disks (SE Sparse)
• All Paths Down (APD) and Permanent Device Loss (PDL) handling
• Boot from software FCoE
• Support for iSCSI Jumbo Frames
• VAAI NAS Linked Clone Support
• SIOC “Stats Only” Mode
• Storage DRS Linked Clone support and Datastore Correlation
• Up to 4 Parallel Storage vMotion Operations
• SSD Monitoring with Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting (SMART)
• vSphere Replication

• 62TB VMDK
• 16Gbps End-to-End FC Support
• PDL Auto Remove
• Improved VAAI UNMAP (now with ESXCLI)
• VMFS Heap Improvements
• vFlash Read Cache (VFRC)
• MSFT Clustering support for FCoE and iSCSI
• Rename VM files on Storage vMotion
• vSphere Replication, Storage vMotion and Storage DRS interoperability
• Compatible with Virtual SAN (VSAN)
• vSphere Replication
  • Multi-site topology
  • Storage vMotion Support
  • Multiple Point-In-Time (MTIP) snapshots

• Virtual SAN 6.0
• Virtual Volumes (VVOL)
• NFS 4.1 client
• NFS and iSCSI IPV6 support
• Storage Based Policy Management (SPBM) now available in all vSphere editions
• SIOC IOPS Reservations
• vSphere Replication
  • Support for 2000 virtual machines per vCenter Server

Network

• Netflow
• PortMirror
• Network I/O Control (NIOC) Enhancements:
  • User Defined Network Resource Pools
  • vSphere Replication Traffic Type
  • Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) support
  • IEEE 802.1p Tagging

• Virtual Distributed Switch (VDS) Network Health check, Config
  Backup and Restore and
  Management Network Rollback
  and Recovery
• Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) Support
• New Bridge Protocol Data Unit (BPDU) Filter
• Port Mirroring (RSPAN / ERSPAN)
• NetFlow version 10
  • Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV)

• Improved LACP Support
  • Up to 64 LAGs
  • 32 Hashing Algorithms
  • Improved Workflows
• Traffic Filtering (Port Group Level)
  • Filter on MAC, Type, or Protocol
  • Filter both Ingress and Egress
• Differentiated Service code Point (DSCP) Tagging
• SR-IOV
  • Communicate Port Group Properties
• Host-Level Packet Capture Tool (tcpdump)
  • 40Gb NIC Support