What’s New in
VMware vSphere
®
6.5
TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER
What’s New in VMware vSphere 6.5
TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER / 2
Table of Contents
What’sNewinVMwarevSphere .............................................
VMwarevCenterServer .......................................................
Migration .....................................................................
ImprovedApplianceManagement ..............................................
VMwarevCenterHighAvailability ...............................................
BackupandRestore ...........................................................
vSphereWebClient ...........................................................
vSphereClient ................................................................
ContentLibrary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vSphereHostLifecycleManagementEnhancements .............................
vSphereUpdateManager .....................................................
VMwareToolsandVirtualHardwareUpgrades ...............................
PreviousWindows-BasedArchitectureStillOered ..........................
HostProfiles .................................................................
ProfileManagementImprovements .........................................
OperationalEnhancements ................................................
AutoDeploy ................................................................
ManageabilityImprovements ..............................................
PerformanceandResiliencyEnhancements ..................................
VMwareToolsand ................................................
SignedISOImages .........................................................
BifurcationofVMwareToolsforLegacyandCurrentGuests ..................
BundlingofToolsforMostPopularGuestsOnly ..............................
GuestOSGranularityIncrease ..............................................
DetailedDisplayofVMwareToolsTypeandVersioninvSphereWebClient .....
ImprovedDetectionofAvailabilityofUpdatedVMwareToolsInstallers .........
vSphereOperations ..........................................................
OperationsManagement ......................................................
LogMonitoring ...............................................................
DeveloperandAutomationInterfaces ..........................................
ApplicationProgramInterfaces ...............................................
vCenterServerApplianceAPI ................................................
VirtualMachineAPI .........................................................
DiscovertheAPIswiththeNewAPIExplorer ..................................
ProcessImprovements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Command-LineInterfaces ....................................................
VMwarePowerCLI ...........................................................
What’s New in VMware vSphere 6.5
TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER / 3
CorevSphereModule ......................................................
StorageModule ...........................................................
VMwareHorizonModule ...................................................
Security ....................................................................
VirtualMachineEncryption ....................................................
EncryptedvMotion ........................................................
SecureBootSupport .........................................................
VirtualMachineSecureBoot ................................................
ESXiHostSecureBoot .....................................................
EnhancedLogging ...........................................................
VMSandboxing ..............................................................
Automation ..................................................................
vSphereAvailabilityEnhancements .........................................
ProactiveHA ................................................................
VMwarevSphereHighAvailabilityOrchestratedRestart ........................
vSphereHAAdmissionControlImprovements .................................
vSphereHASupportforNVIDIAGRIDvGPUConfiguredVMs ...................
VMwarevSphereFaultTolerance .............................................
ResourceManagementEnhancements ........................................
PredictiveDRS ...........................................................
ImprovedvSphereDRSLoadBalancingAlgorithm ..........................
vSphereDRSAdditionalOptions ...........................................
Network-AwarevSphereDRS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
VMwarevSphereStorageIOControlUsing
StoragePolicyBasedManagement ........................................
vSphereIntegratedContainers ................................................
vSphereStorageEnhancements ............................................
AdvancedFormatDrivesandeMode .......................................
AutomatedUNMAP ...........................................................
LUNScalability ...............................................................
NFSSupport .............................................................
SoftwareiSCSIStaticRoutingSupport .........................................
vSphereNetworkingEnhancements ........................................
DedicatedGatewaysforVMkernelNetworkAdapter ...........................
SR-IOVProvisioning .........................................................
SupportforERSPAN ........................................................
ImprovementsinDATAPATH .................................................
Conclusion ..................................................................
AbouttheAuthors ............................................................
TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER / 4
What’s New in VMware vSphere 6.5
What’s New in VMware vSphere 6.5
VMware vSphere® 6.5 is the next-generation infrastructure for next-generation applications. It provides a
powerful, flexible, and secure foundation for business agility that accelerates the digital transformation to
cloud computing and promotes success in the digital economy. vSphere 6.5 supports both existing and
next-generation apps through its 1) simplified customer experience for automation and management at scale;
2) comprehensive built-in security for protecting data, infrastructure, and access; and 3) universal application
platform for running any app anywhere. With vSphere 6.5, customers can now run, manage, connect, and
secure their applications in a common operating environment, across clouds and devices.
This paper will discuss the new and enhanced features in vSphere 6.5 across various areas of technology.
For additional information, see VMware vSphere Documentation.
VMware vCenter Server
VMware vCenter Server® 6.5 has many new and innovative features. The installer has been overhauled, resulting
in a new, modern look and feel. It is now supported on Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems
(OSs) without the need for any plug-ins. With vSphere 6.5, the VMware vCenter Server Appliance™ has
surpassed the Windows installable version. It oers the following exclusive features:
•MigrationTool
•Improvedappliancemanagement
•Nativehighavailability
•Nativebackupandrestore
There are also general improvements to vCenter Server 6.5, including the vSphere Web Client and the
fully supported HTML5-based vSphere Client.
Migration
Figure 1. The New, Modern vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 Installer Including Migrate and Restore Options
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What’s New in VMware vSphere 6.5
The installer has a built-in Migration Tool, providing easy access to the vCenter Server Appliance 6.5. This new
version of Migration Tool provides several improvements over the recent vSphere 6.0 Update 2m release,
including support for Windows vCenter Server 5.5 and 6.0. And VMware vSphere Update Manager™ is now part
of the vCenter Server Appliance 6.5, which is especially valuable to customers that have been waiting to migrate
to vCenter Server Appliance without managing a separate Windows server for vSphere Update Manager . For
customers that have already migrated to the vCenter Server Appliance 6.0, the upgrade process will migrate
vSphere Update Manager baselines and updates to the vCenter Server Appliance 6.5. During the migration
process, the vCenter Server configuration, inventory, and alarm data are migrated by default. vSphere 6.5
provides improvements in data selections in three areas:
•Conguration
•Conguration,events,andtasks
•Conguration,events,tasks,andperformancemetrics
Data is migrated from any database supported in vSphere 5.5 or 6.0 to an embedded vPostgres database. This
applies to databases running embedded or remote Microsoft SQL, Oracle, or PostgreSQL databases.
Improved Appliance Management
vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 also exclusively provides improved appliance management capabilities. The
vCenter Server Appliance Management interface continues its evolution and exposes additional configuration
data. In addition to CPU and memory statistics, it now shows network and database statistics, disk space usage,
and health data. This reduces reliance on a command-line interface for simple monitoring and operational tasks.
Figure 2. Improved vCenter Server Appliance Management Interface Including New vPostgres Visibility
The new vCenter Server Appliance Management interface is still accessed via port 5480 for any vCenter Server
or Platform Services Controller™ appliance. Figure 2 shows the new vCenter Server database monitoring screen,
which provides excellent insight into PostgreSQL database disk usage. This in turn helps prevent crashes due
to the lack of available space. The vSphere Web Client provides new default warnings that alert administrators
when the database is close to running out of space. It also provides a graceful shutdown mechanism at
95 percent full, which helps prevent database corruption. Customers can also configure Syslog settings in
the improved vCenter Server Appliance Management interface.
