This paper is particularly appropriate for this week, enriched with the VMworld 2012 in San Francisco.

The document summarizes the new features and enhancements introduced with release 5.1 of vSphere:

Compute

• Larger virtual machines: up to 64 vCPUs and 1TB vRAM

• New virtual machine format: with CPU performance counters and virtual shared graphics acceleration

Storage

• Flexible, space-efficient storage for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)

Network

• vSphere Distributed Switch: with Network Health Check, Configuration Backup and Restore, Roll Back and Recovery and Link Aggregation Control Protocol support

• Single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) support

Availability

• vSphere vMotion®: without the need for shared storage configurations

• vSphere Data Protection: based on EMC Avamar technology allows to backup VM data to disk without the need of agents and with built-in deduplication

• vSphere Replication: over LAN or WAN

• Zero-downtime upgrade for VMware Tools: no reboot required for subsequent VMware Tools upgrades after 5.1

Security

• VMware vShield Endpoint™

Automation

• vSphere Storage DRS™ and Profile-Driven Storage: with a new integration with VMware vCloud Director

• vSphere Auto Deploy™

Management (with vCenter Server)

• vSphere Web Client

• vCenter Single Sign-On

• vCenter Orchestrator