8 Updates That Make VMware vSphere Better – Keith Barker

Vsphere 6

Keith barker

Editor’s note: Keith Barker has been a CBT Nuggets Trainer since 2012. Some of his many areas of expertise include VMware, Cisco, and Security. Here’s where you can learn more about CBT Nuggets and other great IT training alternatives.

Out with the Old, In with the New

VMware vSphere recently updated from version 5.5 to 6.0. Fortunately, most of the knowledge, understanding, and skills learned by using the previous version still apply to version 6.0.

In this blog post, I’ve written especially for VMinstall, I would like to highlight several changes that were implemented in version 6.

What Makes vSphere 6 Better?

1. The vCenter server appliance, which previously had less capacity, is now on par with the Windows version of the vCenter server.

vCenter can support 1,000 hosts or 10,000 virtual machines.

The deployment method for vCenter is streamlined and enables you to create a vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) as a virtual machine running on an ESXi host.

2. The graphical user interface, which we all know and love as the vSphere Web Client, is still the primary method for managing vSphere but has several improvements.

  • Recent tasks are placed at the bottom, similar to the older vSphere Windows client, and the task window can be minimized or moved if desired.
  • Organization of the Windows can be done using drag-and-drop. Navigation also has been improved.
  • Many commonly used features have been placed on a new drop-down menu that is presented when you go to the home icon.

This new menu item provides quick and easy access with a single click. The context menus also were redesigned, based on feedback that VMware received, to make them more efficient.

One of the biggest benefits of the new web client is the speed at which it responds, which was one of the common complaints and frustrations with previous versions of the web client.

3. Several enhancements were made to the ESXi hosts, including support for more physical RAM, more physical CPUs, and USB version 3 support.  With correct vendor hardware, the hot swapping of solid-state drives is also possible.

4. Regarding the direct console user interface (DCUI) at an ESXi host, there are flexible lockdown modes including normal and strict. Before version 6, there was only one lockdown mode, and it was very inflexible.

5. Version 6 includes a Platform Services Controller. This feature includes common services that are used across the VMware suite, including vCenter single sign-on, licensing, and certificate management.

6. vMotion, which is the ability to move/migrate a virtual machine from one ESXi host to another, was enhanced to allow migration across virtual switches, different vServer systems, and across longer distances than version 5.5.

7. Fault tolerance for virtual machines was enhanced to support as many as four vCPUs on machines that are protected with fault tolerance.

8. Network I/O control was enhanced and now can provide guaranteed bandwidth at the virtual network interface card of a virtual machine. Bandwidth also can be guaranteed to a specific distributed switch port group.

On the Horizon…

We’re in the process of putting together a course on vSphere 6.0, and look forward to helping you conquer the latest version of vSphere! Meanwhile, I hope this has been informative for you, and I’d like to thank you for reading.


Thank you Keith Barker for sharing this exciting news about these cool new features in vSphere 6. We look forward to hearing more about the new VMware training coming soon on CBT Nuggets. If you would like to contribute to VMinstall please let us know.

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