VMware vSphere 4.1 was released today. Please see the "What's New" link below to see all the new features and enhancements.
One thing that I thought was interesting, is this section from the what's new link:
- VMware ESX. VMware vSphere 4.1 and its subsequent update and patch releases are the last releases to include both ESX and ESXi hypervisor architectures. Future major releases of VMware vSphere will include only the VMware ESXi architecture.
- VMware recommends that customers start transitioning to the ESXi architecture when deploying VMware vSphere 4.1.
- VMware will continue to provide technical support for VMware ESX according to the VMware vSphere support policy.
- To learn more about the ESXi architecture and how to migrate from ESX to ESXi, go to the VMware ESX to ESXi Upgrade Center.
That's very interesting I think. I've heard for awhile that vSphere will slowly move away from the Service Console based hypervisor and it looks to be that vSphere 4.1 is definitely moving towards that direction.
Another cool feature I wanted to highlight is the Memory Compression feature. It's an additional feature that complements Memory Transparent Page Sharing that ESX/vSphere has done for a long time. Here's the snippet from the What's New link about this feature:
Memory Compression. Compressed memory is a new level of the memory hierarchy, between RAM and disk. Slower than memory, but much faster than disk, compressed memory improves the performance of virtual machines when memory is under contention, because less virtual memory is swapped to disk. See the vSphere Resource Management Guide.
Another thing I noticed in the release notes is that vCenter Server 4.1 must be 64-bit, which I know for a lot of our customers might mean a migration of their existing vCenter database from a 32-bit installation to a 64-bit one. Here's the info from the release notes for reference:
vCenter Server 4.1 must be installed on a 64-bit system. You can upgrade from vCenter Server 4.0 to vCenter Server 4.1 on the same system if it is 64 bit. To upgrade, confirm that your database is supported with vCenter Server 4.1, and back up your supported database, SSL certificates, and vCenter Server configuration. Then run the vCenter Server installer. The installer informs you that an earlier version of vCenter Server is on the computer and will be upgraded.
You can also upgrade from VirtualCenter Server 2.5 or vCenter Server 4.0 on 32-bit systems to vCenter Server 4.1 on a 64-bit system by installing vCenter Server 4.1 on a 64-bit system and keeping the database from the VirtualCenter Server 2.5 or vCenter Server 4.0 system. You can use the data migration tool to migrate the vCenter Server configuration from the 32-bit system to the 64-bit system. See the vSphere Upgrade Guide.
What's New in vSphere 4.1:
http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere4/doc/vsp_41_new_feat.html
Release Notes for vSphere 4.1:
http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere4/doc/vsp_esx41_vc41_rel_notes.html
vCenter 4.1 Download Location:
http://www.vmware.com/download/download.do?downloadGroup=VC41
vSphere 4.1 Download Location:
http://www.vmware.com/download/download.do?downloadGroup=ESX41
vSphere 4.1 ESXi Installable Download Location:
http://www.vmware.com/download/download.do?downloadGroup=ESXI41
