vSphere 5.5 : Technical Details

Improved Security

There's no longer a dependency on a shared root account when using the ESXi Shell. Local users who are assigned administrative privileges automatically have full shell access—there's no need to "su" to run commands as the root user.

Extensive Logging and Auditing

vSphere 5.5 logs all user activity from both the Shell and the Direct Console User Interface under the user's account. This logging ensures user accountability and makes it easy to audit user activity.

Enhanced vMotion

Live virtual machine migration allows you to combine vMotion and Storage vMotion into a single operation. For small virtual infrastructure implementations, combined vMotion migration means that the entire virtual machine (memory, CPU and disk) moves from one host to another. In larger environments, enhanced vMotion means that you can live-migrate entire virtual machines from one cluster to another, even if those clusters don't share storage.

New Virtual Hardware

vSphere 5.5 introduces a new generation of virtual hardware with virtual machine hardware version 9, which includes the following features:

    Virtual machines can now support up to 64 virtual CPUs.
    Virtual machines can support up to 1 TB of RAM.
    New Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) supports up to 120 devices per virtual machine.
    Maximum VMDK size increased to 62TB.
    Guest OS Storage Reclamation returns disk space to the storage pool when it's de-allocated from within the guest OS.
    Improved CPU virtualization by exposing more information about the host CPU architecture to virtual machines. This improved CPU exposure allows for better debugging, tuning and troubleshooting of operating systems and applications within the virtual machine.

Active Directory Integration

You can join vSphere hosts to your Active Directory domain. Once added, Active Directory handles user authentication and removes the need to create user accounts on each host.
Centralized Management of Host Image and Configuration via Auto Deploy

Combining the features of host profiles, Image Builder and PXE, vSphere Auto Deploy simplifies host installation and upgrade. The Auto Deploy library centrally stores all vSphere host images. Administrators can automatically provision new hosts based on user-defined rules and host rebuilds are as simple as a reboot.

Stateless Firewall

vSphere ESXi now features a service-oriented and stateless firewall, which you can configure using the vSphere client or at the command line with ESXCLI. The new firewall engine eliminates the use of IPTABLES and allows administrators to define port rules for services. Additionally, you can specify IP ranges or individual IP addresses that can connect to host services.