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 Confidential  Information  *****  

Do  not  forward  information  about  this  program  or  release  to  anyone  outside  of  
those  directly  involved  with  Beta  evaluation.  This  information  is  highly  confidential  
and  covered  under  the  Master  Software  Beta  Test  Agreement  that  your  company  
has  previously  accepted.    Features  included  in  this  release  are  subject  to  change.  

What’s  New  in  VMware  vSphere  Beta  (RC  Build)  

 
VMware  vSphere  Beta  will  further  the  innovation  of  the  industry-­‐leading  
virtualization  platform  from  VMware.    This  new  release  contains  the  following  new  
features  and  enhancements:  
 
Install  and  Upgrade  

• Enhanced  Install  and  Upgrade  Capabilities  –  Windows  vCenter  

installation  experience  has  been  enhanced  with  additional  capabilities  
including  custom  ports,  custom  paths,  uninstall  and  error  messaging  
improvements.    Furthermore,  all  upgrade  paths  from  Windows  vCenter  
5.0  and  up  are  now  supported.  vCenter  Server  Appliance  (vCSA)  now  
has  a  guided  installer.    Separate  ISOs  and  scripted  installation  for  both  
vCenter  Server  for  Windows  and  vCSA  reduce  the  overall  download  
time  and  improve  automation  capabilities  respectively.    
 
Compute  
• Expanded  Support  for  New  Hardware,  Architectures,  and  Guest  
Operating  Systems  –  Expanded  support  for  the  latest  x86  chip  sets,  devices,  
and  drivers.  Added  support  for  FreeBSD  10.0  and  Asianux  4  SP3  guest  
operating  systems.  For  a  complete  list  of  guest  operating  systems  supported,  
see  the  VMware  Compatibility  Guide.  
 
• Increased  Scalability  –  Increased  configuration  maximums:  Cluster  
maximums  have  increased  to  support  up  to  64  nodes  and  6,000  VMs.    Virtual  
Machines  will  support  up  to  128  vCPUs  and  4TB  vRAM  and  Hosts  will  
support  up  to  480  physical  CPUs  (Dependent  on  hardware  at  launch  time),  
12  TB  RAM,  64  TB  data  stores,  1000  VMs  and  32  Serial  Ports.  Increased  
support  for  virtual  graphics  including  Nvidia  vGPU.  
 
Storage  
• Storage  IO  Controls  –  New  support  for  per  Virtual  Machine  storage  
reservations  to  guarantee  minimum  service  levels.  
 

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 • Virtual  Volumes  (VVol)  –  Existing  SAN/NAS  systems  become  VM-­‐aware  
making  the  VMDK  file  a  first  class  citizen  in  the  storage  world.    New  APIs  for  
data  operations  at  the  VMDK  granularity.  
 
• Increased  Storage  and  Availability  Integration  –  Integrations  with  new  
content  library,  storage  products  and  features  including  Virtual  Storage  Area  
Network  (Virtual  SAN),  Virtual  Volumes  (VVol),  vFlash,  vSphere  Replication  
and  SRM  for  improved  storage  and  availability  usability.  
 
• NFSv4.1  with  Kerberos  -­‐  Support  for  industry  standard  NFSv4.1  in  the  
storage  stack.  ESX  will  support  the  NFSv4.1  client,  which  connects  to  an  
NFSv4.1  server.  Also  supports  Kerberos  that  is  a  security  feature  of  NFSv4.1  
 
Availability  
• vMotion  Enhancements    
o vMotion  across  vCenter  Servers  –  Allows  VMs  to  move  across  
boundaries  of  vCenter  Server,  Datacenter  Objects  and  Folder  Objects.  
o vMotion  across  virtual  switches  –  Allows  VMs  to  move  between  virtual  
switches.    
o Long  Distance  vMotion  –  Enable  vMotion  to  operate  across  distance  of  
greater  than  100ms  RTTs.  
 
• vSphere  Fault  Tolerance  for  Multi-­‐Processor  VMs  (SMP-­‐FT)  -­‐  Fault  
Tolerance  now  brings  continuous  availability  protection  for  VMs  with  up  to  4  
vCPUs.  
 
• vCloud  Air  Integration  –  New  abilities  to  failover  and/or  failback  to  and/or  
from  vCloud  Air.  
 
• vSphere  Replication  –  Improved  Scale  and  Performance  for  vSphere  
Replication.    Improved  Recover  Point  Objectives  (RPOs)  to  5  minutes.    
Support  for  2000  VM  replication  per  vCenter.  
 
• Application  High  Availability  (App  HA)  –  Expanded  support  for  more  
business  critical  applications.  
 
Network  
• Network  IO  Control  –  New  support  for  per  Virtual  Machine  and  Distributed  
vSwitch  bandwidth  reservations  to  guarantee  minimum  service  levels.  
 
Management  
• vSphere  Web  Client  Enhancements  –  Performance  improvements  to  areas  
including  login,  home  page  loading,  action  menus,  related  objects  and  

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 summary  views.    Streamlined  component  layout  and  optimized  usability  
experience  by  flattening  menus  and  navigation.      
 
• Multi-­‐Site  Content  Library  –  Provides  simple  and  effective  management  for  
VM  templates,  vApps,  ISO  images  and  scripts  for  vSphere  Admins  –  
collectively  called  “content”  –  that  can  be  synchronized  across  sites  and  
vCenter  Servers.  
 
• Virtual  Datacenters  –  Provides  resource  aggregation  and  policy-­‐based  
placement  intelligence,  while  servicing  as  a  primary  point  of  integration  
across  the  vCloud  Suite.  
 
• Policy  Based  Management  –  Enables  administrators  to  become  more  
operationally  efficient  and  automated  in  both  the  initial  placement  and  
ongoing  maintenance  of  virtual  machines.  
 
• vSphere  Host  Client  –  C#-­‐based  host  client  available  in  this  milestone  that  
can  manage  hosts  running  hardware  versions  8  to  11.    Flex-­‐based  host  client  
will  no  longer  be  available.      
 
• VMware  Certificate  Lifecycle  Management  –  A  new  command  line  
interface  (CLI)  for  managing  both  VMware  and  third-­‐party  certificates.  

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