VMware vSphere 7 Released and more

VMware has released vSphere 7.0, vSphere Replication 8.3, Remote Console 11.1.0 and PowerCLI 12.0.

This mean that it bye bye to the Windows based vCenter External PSC, Flash/Flex web client and Linux style drivers.

This is just an overview of some of the new features and enhancements.

Before upgrading, please check compatibility/interoperability with other solutions.

At the moment VMwares interoperability is not updated.

vSphere 7

What’s new:

vCenter Server Scalability Enhancements

• vCenter Server (standalone):
  • Hosts per vCenter Server: 2500 (+500)
  • Powered on VMs per vCenter Server: 30,000 (+5000)
• Linked Mode vCenter Servers: 15 per SSO Domain
  • Hosts: 15,000 (+10,000)
  • Powered on VMs: 150,000 (+100,000)
• vCenter Server Latency:
  • vCenter Server to vCenter Server: 150ms (+50)
  • vCenter Server to ESXi Host: 150ms
  • vSphere Client to vCenter Server: 100ms

vCenter Server Profiles

If you have many vCenters, this will help you keep the configuration aligned.

Content Library

• VM Template Check In/Check Out & Versioning
• Advanced Configuration and Optimization

vCenter Server Multi-Homing

vCenter now support up to 4 Nic’s, one of them is reserved for vCenter HA.

Skyline Health for vSphere 7

Improved Skyline Health.

Lifecycle management

There are multiple improvment for Lifecycle management of the vSphere environment.

• vCenter Update Planner
  • This will check for problems with plugin (like earlier version)
  • Check interoperability with other VMware Products
  • Notification for updates/upgrades
• ESXi Desired state patching
  • You can do this on the HA/DRS cluster
    • Set which ESXi build you want
    • Hardware Vendor Driver packages
    • Firmware state (HBA/Network/CNA/Bios/BMC)
      • Uses Dell OpenManage and HPE OneView
      • checks HCL/VCG

Security

• Simplified Certificate Management
  • including Certificate API
• Identity Federation
  • Standards based federated authentication with enterprise identity providers ( IdPs
  • Reduced audit scope & vSphere Admin workload
  • Flexible MFA options
  • SSO still exists, though have to choose IdF or AD/LDAP/IWA
  • ADFS initially
• vSphere Trust Authority
  • Improvement for the Key management solution
  • This means that vCenter now also can be encrypted

vSphere DRS

• Workload centric
• Runs every 1 min. (former 5 min.)
• Uses the VM DRS Score
• Based on granted memory
• Improved dashboard

Assignable Hardware

Instead of assigning PCI/GPU devices, you can assign a profile.

vMotion

Improved vMotion for large VM’s, this also gives better vMotion for small VM’s. Both the migration and the Stun has been reduced.

Precision Time Protocol (PTP)

This will give better timekeeping it the VM, sub-millisecond accuracy

vSAN

Lifecycle management

This will also use the new Lifecycle management, but there are some thing that do not work with this, see the documentation for more information.

Integrated File Services

• Provision vSAN cluster capacity for file shares
• Supports NFS v4.1 & v3
• Supports quotas for file shares
• Suited for Cloud Native & traditional workloads on vSAN
• Works with common vSAN/vSphere services
• vSphere Life Cycle Manager (vLCM) and vSAN File System can not be enabled together at 7.0 GA
• Workload guidance
  • Workloads with large IO size, more sequential workloads will do better
  • Not optimal for small random IO
  • Applications that write out, or read in entire files WordPress, HTTP file servers, log targets)
  • Not optimal for DB like workloads SQLlite , MySQL, MongoDB, MSSQL,
  • Works better for many volumes, many client workloads

Stretched Cluster and 2-Node

If the Witness is replaced, the rebuild starts immediate.

Intelligent Capacity Management for Stretched Cluster

Better handling of unbalanced stretched clusters.

Other

• Improved Consistency in VM Capacity Reporting
• View Memory Consumption for vSAN services
• Awareness of vSphere Replication Data
• Support for 32 TB devices
• Support for Windows Failover Cluster with shared disks
• Support for Oracle RAC

See the release notes here and the GA annocement here.

vSphere Replication 8.3

What’s new:

• vSphere Replication 8.3 adds compatibility with VMware vSphere7.0.
• Seamless disk re-sizing. You can increase the virtual disks of virtual machines that are configured for replication, without interruption of ongoing replication. The virtual disk on the target site will be automatically resized.
• vSphere Replication Configuration Export/Import Tool. You can use the vSphere Replication Configuration Import/Export Tool to export and import configuration data of the replications, created in vSphere Replication. For more information on the new feature, see the vSphere Replication 8.3 Installation and Configuration.
• vRealize Operations Management Pack for vSphere Replication 8.3. For information about the management pack, see the VMware vRealize Operations Management Pack for vSphere Replication 8.3 Release Notes.
• vRealize Orchestrator Plug-In for vSphere Replication 8.3. For information about the new workflows, see the VMware vRealize Orchestrator Plug-In for vSphere Replication 8.3 Release Notes.
• vSphere Replication is compatible with N-1 version of vSphere Replication on the paired site. For example, if the current version of vSphere Replication is 8.3, the supported versions for the paired site is 8.2 and later.
• Support for vVol.

See the release notes here.

VMware Remote Console 11.1.0 

See the release notes here.

PowerCLI 12.0

This version supports vSphere 7.0 and has a lot of new cmdlets.

• Added cmdlets for ESXi host network management
• Added cmdlets for HCX management
• Added cmdlets for Namespace Management
• Added cmdlets for Trusted Host Services management
• Added cmdlets for VM Guest Disk management
• Added cmdlets for VMware Cloud on AWS management
• Added cmdlets for vSAN management
• New module for VMware Cloud Services management
• Updated support for vSphere 7.0
• Updated support for vRealize Operations 8.0
• Updated support of the License module for multiplatform use
• Updated support of the vROps module for multiplatform use
• Updated support of Open-VMConsoleWindow for multiplatform use
• Updated support of Move-VM to include opaque networks
• Updated support for PowerShell versions

See the VMware blog about it here.