Just came across this post on one of the forums about new features coming to vSphere 5.5. It is not an official release but more of a highlights by someone participating in beta testing. I’ve just formated this info:
Administrative UI (Web Client)
The 2013 Administrative UI is built around improved performance and a more native web applications feel.
– Improved usability and more search filters, along with the introduction of the ‘recent object’ tabs help admins find and manager their key objects with fewer clicks.
– The new UI is built to manage larger inventories with a faster response time.
– Faster response time across the entire UI
vSphere Replication
The vSphere Replication release for 2013 adds the following new capabilities:
– Ability to deploy new appliances to allow for replication between clusters and non-shared storage deployments
– Multiple points in time support allows administrators to recover to a previous snapshot thus providing protection from logical corruptions in the application that may have been replicated.
– Storage DRS Interoperability – allows for replicated VMs to be storage vMotioned across datastores with no interruption to ongoing replication
– Simplified Management – Deeper integration into the vSphere Web Client to configure and monitor replication within the VM and vCenter management panes simplifies the management experience for replication
– VSAN interoperability to protect and recover virtual machines running on VSAN datastores
vCenter Orchestrator
With this release, vCenter Orchestrator is greatly optimized for growing clouds because of significant improvements in scalability and high availability. Workflow developers can benefit from a more simplified and efficient development experience provided by the new debugging and failure diagnostic capabilities in the vCenter Orchestrator client.
Virtual SAN
Virtual SAN is a software-based storage solution built into the hypervisor that aggregates the hosts’ local storage devices (SSD and HDD) and makes them appear as a single pool of storage shared across all hosts.
VMware Virtual Flash (vFlash).
Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) Highlights:
This vSphere version supports > 2TB vdisks (vmdk size). Customers will be able to create vmdks upto 64TB. Large files can now be contained within a single vdisk. vSphere version 5.5 and VMFS 5 is needed to create >2TB vdisk.
vCloud Director
Enhancements in this vCloud Director 5.5 release focus on the Content Catalog, vApp provisioning and lifecycle management, improved OVF import/export functionality and added browser support to include supporting Mac OS.
vCloud Director Virtual Appliance
The vCloud Director beta includes support for the vCloud Director Virtual Appliance to help facilitate PoCs and Evals.
– vCloud Director cell is available in a virtual appliance form factor for quick-and-easy deployment and setup. With the appliance you can choose to use an internal/embedded database or an external database of your choice (Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle).
– As with prior releases, the vCD virtual appliance is available for PoC/Eval use only. For help with deploying and configuring the vCloud Director virtual appliance please see the vCloud Director 5.5 Virtual Appliance Deployment Guide available in the Beta Community.
Content Catalog
This release includes multiple enhancements to the Content Catalog.
Networking Enhancements
This release contains two major networking enhancements
Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP): Provides increased bandwidth, better load balancing, Improved link level redundancy and easier operations for hypervisor uplinks connected to physical network.
– LACP in vSphere5.5 allows for a rich choice of over 22 load balancing algorithms and 32 LAGs per host and ensures the largest density of physical NICs can be aggregated.
Security Features
Distributed Firewall is a key service in the Software Defined Datacenter. It secures and isolates workloads inside the virtual environment. Key new features:
Performance: High performance stateful firewall at hypervisor of each host
vCenter Site Recovery Manager 2013
Feature Highlights: Here are some key features supported in the beta refresh:
– Support for vSAN with vSphere Replication
– SDRS / Storage vMotion interoperability
– New configuration option to support vSphere Replication Multi-Point-In-Time snapshots during failover
VMware vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager (MHM) 1.1
The MHM 1.1 release adds the following new capabilities:
– Support for Microsoft Hyper-V3 hypervisor (as well as Windows 2008 R2 and 2008).
– The ability to cold-migrate VMs from Hyper-V to ESX hosts.