What’s New in VMware vSphere 6.0

VMworld 2014 is coming to a close, and VMware administrators are just starting to sort through all of the news, new products, and other information coming out of the event. I've already written a bit about EVO: RAIL, the vRealize Suite, and vCloud Air, but there was a lot of other information released this week that deserves a deeper dive. One product that was mentioned often by VMware executives was the upcoming VMware vSphere 6.0 release, which VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said was now available in public beta form.

Yet while many VMware execs mentioned individual features of vSphere 6.0 in piece-meal fashion, there wasn't an umbrella announcement for vSphere 6.0, which means that we're likely to get more official news in the weeks in months to come. That said, there was enough information release during VMworld for us to start assembling a picture of what vSphere 6.0 will have to offer feature-wise, so I've cobbled together some of the available information below.

Note: Given that VMware vSphere 6.0 is still in beta form, I'd expect the following list of features to be tweaked and revised as the product gets closer to final release. I'll continue to update this post as new information becomes available, so please bookmark this page for future reference. If you know of a vSphere 6.0 feature that isn't listed here, please drop me an email and I'll credit you and add it to the post.

New Features in VMware vSphere 6.0

So what new features will VMware vSphere 6.0 have to offer? Some information was made public this week at VMworld 2014, and I've assembled the following list of new features, largely gleaned from the day one and day two keynotes, as well as some of the sessions and other information released at the show.
Virtual Volumes (VVols)

Mentioned during the day 1 keynote by VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, virtual volumes (VVols) take the software-defined mindset and apply it to external storage. VMware's Rawlinson Rivera goes into more detail as to what VVols can offer via a blog post on the VMware website, writing that VVols serves up an approach to storage in which an "individual virtual machine and its disks, rather than a LUN, become a unit of storage management for a storage system. Virtual volumes encapsulate virtual disks and other virtual machine files, and natively store the files on the storage system."

VVols were previewed years ago at VMworld 2012, and VMware has steadily been working on the technology since then. In the video embedded below (and in a companion VVols blog post) VMware gives a bit more information on what VVols is.

Fault Tolerance for Multi-Processor Virtual Machines

One long-awaited vSphere feature was support for fault tolerance for multi-processor virtual machines, and that functionality will be added to VMware vSphere 6. With vSphere 6. VMs with up to 64GB RAM and 4 vCPUs will be covered under with fault tolerance, which Raghuram said should "...provide these application with zero downtimes."

vMotion Improvements

VMware vMotion is one of the most popular features vSphere features, and allows running virtual machines to be shifted from one physical server (or several) without any downtime. VMware's Raghu Raghuram mentioned during the VMworld 2014 Day 2 keynote that they were planning to make several improvements to vMotion in vSphere 6, namely Cross vCenter vMotion and Long Distance vMotion.

• Cross vCenter vMotion: This feature will allow applications to be migrated from physical racks managed by different instances of VMware vCenter. Prior to vSphere 6, migrating VMs between different instances of VMware vCenter wasn't possible, so this feature should make the lives of VMware administrators a bit easier.
• Long Distance vMotion: In addition to allowing admins to move VMs between instances of vCenter, vSphere 6 will also support the migration of applications from one datacenter to another datacenter located across the country. Raghuram said that -- used in conjunction with updates to VMware NSX -- network properties of apps being migrated this way won't have to be updating, adding that the technology is "science fiction in action."
  

Used in conjunction, these new features will improve load balancing and the performance of applications, and will provide for "proactive disaster avoidance" and seamless data center migration.

How Do I Manage Hyper-V?

​Hyper-V Management Basics for Small to Medium Deployment

Hyper-V Manager is the basic administration tool that is included in Windows Server and Windows 8/8.1 Pro/Enterprise. We normally use Hyper-V Manager for the following scenarios:

• Managing a small number of hosts
• Configuring host settings
• Creating and managing virtual machines on non-clustered hosts
• Troubleshooting a host

It's typically bad practice to regularly log into hosts to manage them. You should enable Hyper-V Manager on your PC to manage your hosts. Not only is this a better practice, but it also makes administration quicker and easier. If you're working in a business that's using old technologies, such as Windows 7, then you can deploy a Windows Server 2012 RDS server, install Hyper-V Manager on it, and publish the application to Hyper-V administrators. This makes deploying Windows 8.1 for IT seem much easier and more economical.



You must use a version of Hyper-V Manager that is compatible with the hypervisor version. For example, you cannot use Hyper-V Manager for Windows Server 2008 R2 to manage Windows Server 2012, as there is a mismatch of WMI versions. However, you can use the Hyper-V Manager in Windows 8.1 to manage Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.

Highly Available Virtual Machines

If you deploy clustered hosts, then you will actually need to use two tools. If you want a virtual machine to be highly available (HA), then you will deploy and configure that virtual machine using Failover Cluster Manager. Similar to Hyper-V Manager, you should not use Failover Cluster Manager on the hosts. Instead, you should install it on your PC.

Unlike Hyper-V Manager, you will have to download the Remote Server Administration Toolkit for your version of the Windows client OS. Note that you must run Windows 8.1 on your PC to remotely manage Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8.1 or 8 to manage Windows Server 2012, and Windows 7 to manage Windows Server 2008 R2.

You will continue to use Hyper-V Manager to configure host settings, with one exception; Live Migration settings are configured in Failover Cluster Manager. Non-clustered hosts require a bit more security work to enable Live Migration, but a cluster has its own security boundary that makes Live Migration almost a click-and-go experience.



Creating virtual machines in Hyper-V Manager on a Hyper-V cluster is a mistake that is commonly made by people that are new to Hyper-V. The resulting virtual machine is not HA, but you can fix this with the following steps:

• Using Live Storage Migration to move the virtual machines files to the cluster's storage if required.
• Using Configure Role to add the existing virtual machine to the management scope of the cluster. No restarts are required of the virtual machine.

Prior to Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, a common mistake was to configure virtual machine settings in Hyper-V Manager. Those settings would be lost if the virtual machine moved nodes because the settings were not saved in the cluster's database. If you forget to use Failover Cluster Manager you can update the settings of the virtual machine in the cluster. Note that Windows Server 2012 prevents you from editing the settings of HA virtual machines in Hyper-V Manager.

Managing Hyper-V in Medium to Large Deployments

There are several different scenarios where you will purchase System Center with per-host licensing and use System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to manage Hyper-V, including:

• Scale: You need a solution to centrally manage lots of hosts/clusters.
• Cloud: You will be deploying public or private clouds.
• Deployment: You need faster host, storage, virtual machine, or service deployment.
• Delegation: You want to enable delegation of administration, enabling some administrators to manage some hosts.

Although SCVMM can be used to deploy Hyper-V clusters in theory, I still prefer to configure and manage clusters using Failover Cluster Manager, where I use SCVMM's bare metal deployment to create the hosts. I have found that SCVMM is not so hot in this department.

Note that SCVMM is just one of eight products in the System Center license suite. You will choose from the System Center menu to enable other elements of management, protection, and automation.

Hyper-V Automation

PowerShell yes, I said it. If you want to do things at scale, get repeatable and predictable results, and do it quickly, then invest some time in Windows PowerShell to get the job done. And you'll also get access to deeper features that are not otherwise revealed in a GUI. You can use cmdlets from Hyper-V, Failover Cluster Manager, and SCVMM to write your scripts in the easy to use Integrated Scripting Editor (ISE).



Using Hyper-V, System Center, and Windows Azure Pack

You will deploy a cloud whenever you want to enable self-service deployment of virtual machines and services. The front-end of a Microsoft cloud based on Hyper-V and System Center is the Windows Azure Pack (WAP). There are two portals:

• The administrative portal: Used to manage the cloud
• The tenant portal: Used by users of the cloud to deploy virtual machines and services

Note that you will continue to use System Center to manage and monitor the fabric of the cloud.