Vsphere 5 – The next Generation Virtualization

On July 12^th 2011, VMware unveiled VSphere 5. VMware’s CEO Paul Maritz has launched this product at a live event in California. This suite is much awaited by everyone after the launch of its previous version Vsphere four years ago.  

With over 200 new and enhanced features, this surely will revolutionize the way virtualization works. Now VMware has collaborated this with cloud infrastructure which provides better efficiency and stability. With the launch of this, they have put an end to the ESX architecture while developing this product with ESXi architecture. Hence there will be a significant difference for the client machine as it will require a few drivers. With Vsphere 5, we can achieve 100% virtualization.

While more and more companies are opting for the virtualization, this will be a big leap forward for VMware to increase its market share. As a dominant in virtualization, the competitors like Microsoft and Citrix will have to prove with its new product to sustain in market. While the market for Hyper V and Xen server has declined, Vsphere still remains the pioneer product in virtualization.

In a statement at the live event VMware CEO Paul Maritz said "The market has fully embraced virtualization as a key transformative technology at the heart of the next era of computing. With vSphere® 5 and our cloud infrastructure suite, VMware is helping customers accelerate towards more efficient and automated cloud infrastructure, redefining how resources are managed and secured, and ultimately, driving a more productive relationship between IT and the businesses they serve."

Please find some of the exiting features

Larger VM’s

Vsphere 5 supports 4 times larger and powerful virtual machine than its predecessor. It will enable to host more and more business critical application with broader processors and enhanced memory.

Memory

Virtual machines hosted with this can support up to one terabyte of memory while its predecessor supports only 256 GB. This will enable more business critical application to host in a guest operating system.

Processor

It supports 32 way SMP in a virtual machine, while VSphere 4 supports only 8 virtual CPU.

I/O Operation

These VMs will be able to process in excess of 1 million I/O operations per second, which will far surpass current requirements of even the most resource-intensive applications.

High Availability (HA)

Vsphere 5 introduces a new architecture for HA which is more stable, scalable and superior availability feature. This will make sure all the VM to be online 24/7 and thereby guaranteeing business continuity.

Policy Management

 Three new automation advancements will deliver cloud agility. VMware vSphere 5 will introduce three new features that automate datacenter resource management to help IT respond to the business faster while reducing operating expenses.  These features will deliver intelligent policy management: a “set it and forget it” approach to datacenter resource management. Customers will define the policy and establish the operating parameters, and VMware vSphere 5 will do the rest.  VMware vSphere 5 intelligent policy management features will include:

a) Auto-Deploy will enable IT to automatically deploy servers “on the fly” and will be able to

reduce the time it takes to deploy a datacenter with 40 servers from 20 hours to 10

minutes. Once the servers are up and running, Auto-Deploy will also automate the

patching process, making it possible to instantly apply patches to many servers at once.

b) Profile-Driven Storage will reduce the number of steps required to select storage resources by grouping storage according to user-defined policies (i.e. gold, silver, bronze). During the provisioning process, customers will simply click to specify which level of service the VM requires, and VMware vSphere will automatically use the storage resources that best align with that level of service.

c) Storage DRS will extend the automated load balancing capabilities VMware first

introduced in 2006 with Distributed Resource Scheduler™ to include storage characteristics. Once a customer has set the storage policy of a VM, Storage DRS will automatically manage the placement and balancing of the VM across storage resources. By automating the ongoing resource allocations, Storage DRS will eliminate the need for IT to monitor or intervene, while ensuring the VM maintains the service level defined by its policy.

ESXi Architecture

It is build on ESXi architecture which is exclusively designed for Virtual hypervisor architecture.

 VMware vSphere 5 is the first version of VMware vSphere built exclusively on ESXi™, the only hypervisor purpose-built for virtualization that runs independently from a general-purpose operating system. With an ultrathin architecture, ESXi delivers industry leading performance, reliability and scalability all within a footprint less than 100MB, which means streamlined deployment and configuration as well as simplified patching and updating and better security.