vSphere 6.5 and other Released

VMware has today released the new vSPhere 6.5 and other.

vSphere 6.5 What's new:

vCenter

• Migration Tool
• Improved appliance management
• Native high availability
• Native backup and restore
• HTML5-based vSphere Client
• Improved Appliance Management
• VMware vCenter High Availability
• Improved vSphere Web Client
• vCSA includes vSphere Update Manager
• Improved Host Profiles
• Improved Auto Deploy
• VMware Tools version now showen in client

Security

• Virtual Machine Encryption
• Encrypted vMotion
• Secure Boot Support
• VM Secure Boot
• ESXi Host Secure Boot
• Enhanced Logging
• Proactive HA
• VMware vSphere High Availability Orchestrated Restart
• vSphere HA Admission Control Improvements
• VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance
• Improved vSphere DRS Load Balancing Algorithm
• vSphere DRS Additional Options
• Network-Aware vSphere DRS

Improved Content Library

Easy use of RestFull API 

Storage

• VMware vSphere Storage I/O Control Using Storage Policy Based Management
• Advanced Format Drives and 512e Mode
• Automated UNMAP
• LUN Scalability
• Improved NFS 4.1 Support
• Software iSCSI Static Routing Support
• VVOL 2.0
• VASA 23.0
• VSAN 6.5

Networking

• Enhancements for Nested ESXi
• Dedicated Gateways for VMkernel Network Adapter
• Improved SR-IOV Provisioning
• Support for ERSPAN
• Improvements in DATAPATH

See what's new vsphere 6.5 white paper here: http://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/whitepaper/vsphere/vmw-white-paper-vsphr-whats-new-6-5.pdf

release notes for vSphree 6.5: http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/vsphere/65/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-65-release-notes.html

​vRealize Log Insight 4.0 What's new:

General

• vSphere 6.5 compatibility.
• System notification enhancements.
• Support for custom SSL certificates in the vCenter Server edition.
• Support for Spanish locale(ES).

UI Features

• New overall User Interface based on the VMware Clarity standard.
• New speedometer-like Gauge Chart type for event count visualizations.
• New Admin Alert Management tool and UI to view and manage all user alerts.
• New filter called Does Not Exist to find events that do not contain some specified field.
• Support for Datastore Device ID-to-name aliasing in event queries and results.
• New "blur" on session timeout.

Server Features

• Support for Syslog octet-framing over TCP.
• Defined REST APIs for installing Log Insight servers and clusters.
• Support for time ranges with Event Type alert queries.

Agent and Importer Features

• SLES 11 SP3 and SLES 12 SP1 are supported for Linux agents.
• The dateext (daily extension) option of logrotate is now supported.
• SSL for the vRealize Log Insight agent is now enabled by default.

Content Pack Features

• Users can now subscribe to content pack alerts that allow automated updates inline with the associated content pack.
• Changed Behavior
• New Agent installations have SSL enabled by default. Previously, Agent installs defaulted to SSL off. Upgrading does not affect current SSL settings.
• New event forwarder destinations now default to verifying SSL certificates. Previously, SSL certificates were not verified by default. Upgrading does not affect current settings.
• vRealize Log Insight for vCenter now allows you to change SSL settings.
• For content pack alerts instantiated in 4.0, content pack updates now automatically update alert definitions. If needed, you can preserve customizations by exporting them and then importing them back into the user profile after the update is applied

See release notes here: http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/LogInsight/40/log-insight-40-release-notes.html

vSphere Replication 6.5 What's new:

• vSphere 6.5 support
• 5-minute Recovery Point Objective (RPO) support for additional data store types – This version of vSphere Replication extends support for the 5 minute RPO setting to the following new data stores: VMFS 5, VMFS 6, NFS 4.1, NFS 3, VVOL and VSAN 6.5. This allows customers to replicate virtual machine workloads with an RPO setting as low as 5-minutes between these various data store options.
• Spanish locale for the product user interface and documentation – This version of vSphere Replication adds support for Spanish language localization of the UI and delivers product documentation in Spanish.
• Participation in the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP)

See release notes here:http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/vdp/61/data-protection-613-release-notes.html

vSphere Data Protection 6.1.3 What's new:

• Support for vSphere 6.5 (only)

vRealize Operations Manager 6.4 What's new:

Pinpoints and helps you clean up alerts in your environments:

• Groups alerts by the definition to identify noisiest alerts.
• Allows single-click disabling of alerts across the system or for a given policy.

Reflects business context based on vSphere VM folders:

• vSphere VM folders are now incorporated into the navigation tree for quick searching.

Thirteen new installed dashboards to display status, identify problems, and at-a-glance share data with your peers:

• A getting started dashboard to introduce you to using our dashboards
• Environment and capacity overview dashboards to get a summary of your environments.
• VM troubleshooting dashboard that helps you diagnose problems in a VM and start solving them.
• Infrastructure capacity and performance dashboards to view status and see problems across your datacenter.
• VM and infrastructure configuration dashboards to highlight inconsistencies and violations of VMware best practices in your environment.
• Enhanced All Metrics tab to ease troubleshooting:
• Set of key KPIs per object and resource for a quick start of your investigation process.
• Ability to correlate properties with metrics

General improvements

• Support for vSphere 6.5
• Summary pages for key vSphere objects:
• Deeper information about the objects. For VMs, vRealize Operations Manager provides OS version, IP address, tags, and other details.
• Show known problems on an object or on its childre.
• Display key performance indicators for these objects.
• Highlight problems with related objects with the same infrastructure, such as neighbors of a VM or children of a host.
• Predictive DRS (pDRS) enables vRealize Operations to provide long-term forecast metrics to augment the short-term placement criteria of the vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). This capability only works within vSphere version 6.5 or above. Note that your software warranty and support policy only applies when operating pDRS in a cluster containing 4,000 or fewer VMs (see section 5.3.1 of the VMware Product Guide.

See release notes here: http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/vrops/64/vrops-64-release-notes.html

vRealize Business for Cloud 7.2.0 What's new:

• Compatible with latest versions of VMware solutions. vRealize Business for Cloud 7.2 is compatible with the latest versions of vRealize Automation, VMware Identity Manager and vCenter Server. To see the list of all supported versions, see the Interoperabilty matrix.
  
• Upgraded JRE to 1.8 update 102. JRE has been upgraded to 1.8.0_102 in this release.
  
• Upgraded Postgres database to 9.5 version. vRealize Business for Cloud Postgres appliance database has been upgraded to 9.5 version in this release.
  
• Supports new currencies. vRealize Business for Cloud 7.2 supports several additional currencies for cost calculation, which you can set during vRealize Business for Cloud deployment. To see the list of supported currencies, see the Installation Guide.
  
• Calculates price of the short-lived virtual machines. Earlier releases of vRealize Business for Cloud calculated the price for the virtual machines that were live during cost calculation. vRealize Business for Cloud 7.2 considers the virtual machines that were powered on for short period also.
  
• Allows to download support files for install or upgrade. You can download the vRealize Business for Cloud log files for analyzing and to get support for the install and upgrade problems.
  
• Exports a report for specific period using API. You can generate a report for a specific period by providing the date filters in the API.
  
• Enables to price network services. vRealize Business for Cloud 7.2 provides an ability to price network services at two levels such as fixed price and recurring price, which can be mapped to business units.
  
• Enables pricing for fault tolerance vCenter Server virtual machines. vRealize Business for Cloud 7.2 can apply price on the fault tolerance property of virtual machines that are part of vCenter Servers.
  
• Provides AWS EC2 and EBS operational statistics. You can view the total cost and operational statistics of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) services and Elastic Block Store (EBS) in vRealize Business for Cloud 7.2.
  
• Allows to generate a new reports. You can generate additional reports in vRealize Business for Cloud 7.2.
  
  • Cloud Business Analysis Report: Provides a detailed expenditure information and operational details of your infrastructure on private and its comparison information with public cloud environments.
    
  • Daily Price Report: Provides the price of all virtual machines on vCenter Servers for last three months.
    
  • Power State Change for VMs. You can track the power-on and power-off states of vCenter Server virtual machines for each day of a specific month and its corresponding duration.
    
• Displays uptime of virtual machines. You can see the total duration of the vCenter Server virtual machines that were up and running for a specific month.
  

See the release notes here: http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/vRBforCloud/72/vRBforCloud-72-release-notes.html

What's New in Site Recovery Manager 6.5:

VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.5 is compatible with VMware vSphere 6.5.

VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.5 provides the following new features:

• vRealize Operations Management Pack for Site Recovery Manager 6.5. Site Recovery Manager 6.5 delivers integration with vRealize Operations Manager through a new management pack. With the management pack installed on vRealize Operations Manager, you can monitor key Site Recovery Manager health metrics such as Site Recovery Manager Server connectivity, and protection group and recovery plan status. For information about the management pack, see VMware vRealize Operations Management Pack for Site Recovery Manager 6.5 Release Notes.
• Support for VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes through vSphere Replication. Site Recovery Manager 6.5 supports protection and orchestrated recovery of virtual machines that are located on Virtual Volume datastores and replicated by vSphere Replication.
• Support for silent installation, upgrade, and uninstallation.
• Enhancements to Site Recovery Manager public API. Site Recovery Manager 6.5 introduces new methods in the product’s Public API. With the public API, you have programmatic access to a wider range of product functionality and more extensive product automation. For information about the new and updated API methods, see Site Recovery Manager API Developer’s Guide.
• Support for the vCenter Server HA feature. Site Recovery Manager works normally in the event that vCenter Server HA fails over to another vCenter Server node.
• Support for migration of a vCenter Server installation on Windows to a vCenter Server Appliance installation during upgrade. You can use VMware Migration Assistant to upgrade and migrate your environment from vCenter Server 6.0 for Windows to vCenter Server 6.5 Appliance. The procedure is fully compatible with a standard Site Recovery Manager direct upgrade.
• Support for the Virtual Machine Encryption feature. Site Recovery Manager 6.5 supports the protection and recovery of encrypted virtual machines with Storage Policy Protection Groups (SPPGs). For information about the protection of encrypted VMs, see Site Recovery Manager 6.5 Administration.
• Support for Test Recovery operation when the protected and recovery sites are disconnected.
• Participation in the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP)

See releaes notes here: http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/srm/65/srm-releasenotes-6-5.html

PowerCLI 6.5

PowerCLI 6.5 is not available now, but will soon.

Notes:

William Lam has made a complete list with links to all the new stuff: http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2016/11/vsphere65.html