Just to let you know there will be an update to ESX at the end of this year.

 

It will be available in the traditional format of ESX 3.5 on a CD, but VMware will also be shipping it via Hardware Manufacturers with servers as a flash card. Known as 3i.

 

For more info please contact your account manager...

 

New Features :

 

Guided Consolidation

  • Enhancement to VirtualCenter intended for use in smaller environments
  • Guides new virtualization users through the consolidation process in a wizard-based, tutorial-like fashion
  • Allows first time virtualization users to get started and achieve the benefits of server consolidation faster than ever before
  • Leverages capacity planning capabilities to discover physical servers, analyze their performance and trigger the conversion of these physical systems into virtual machines and intelligently places them on the most appropriate VMware ESX Server or VMware Server hosts

VMware Update Manager

  • Automates patch and update management for ESX Server hosts and select Microsoft and Linux virtual machines
  • Addresses one of the most significant pain points for every IT department - tracking patch levels and manually applying the latest security/bug fixes
  • Integrates with DRS to ensure zero-downtime ESX Server host patching capabilities
  • Enforces higher levels of compliance to patch standards than physical environments by securely patching offline virtual machines

VMware Distributed Power Management (Experimental)

  • Reduces power consumption in the datacenter through intelligent workload balancing
  • Automatically powers off servers not currently needed in order to meet service levels, and automatically powers on servers as demand for compute resources increases

VMware Storage VMotion

  • Enables live migration of virtual machine disks from one datastore to another with no disruption or downtime
  • Allows IT administrators to minimize service disruption due to planned storage downtime previously incurred for rebalancing or retiring storage arrays
  • Simplifies array migration and or/upgrade tasks, and reduces I/O bottlenecks by moving virtual machines to the best available storage resource in your environment

VMware Site Recovery Manager – (released 2008)

  • Provides industry-leading capabilities for fully automating the entire disaster recovery process
  • Integrates with VMware VirtualCenter and guides users through the process of creating, automating, and testing disaster recovery plans for their virtual infrastructure
  • Transforms disaster recovery into a dramatically simpler, faster, and more reliable process that adapts to today’s dynamic datacenters

 

 

Enhancements :

 

ESX Server Scalability Enhancements

Easy scaling of workloads with

  • Support for 64GB of RAM in virtual machines
  • Support for physical machines with upto 128GB of RAM.

Expanded Storage and Networking Choices

Expanded storage and networking choices:

  • Support for local SATA storage  
  • Support for 10 GigE
  • Support for Infiniband