During VMworld Barcelona earlier this week Pat Gelsinger, VMware CEO announced the latest version of VMware’s virtualisation platform, vSphere 6.5. This is VMware’s 5th update to vSphere in just two years.
The features of this version were explained during the second keynote of VMworld by VP and CTO of VMware, Ray O’Farrell.
The three challenges VMware aims to address with this update are:
- Complex Environments
- Increasing Security Threats
- Support for new and existing apps.
Dramatically Simplified Experience
vSphere 6.5 aims to provide management simplicity, operational efficiency and faster time to market. This version of vSphere makes the vCentre Server Appliance the core building block of a vSphere environment, rather than the now legacy Windows version. To ensure an easy transition to the appliance VMware has now created a fully supported migration tool and it is designed to be easier to maintain and upgrade than ever before.
vSphere 6.5 also delivers a simplified experience through the graphical user interface with the new HTML5-based vSphere Client. This provides a modern user interface that is easy to use and responsive. This probably received the biggest cheer of the conference when announced on stage.
Security upgrades
With the ever increasing concern about cyber security, VMware has hardened and improved the vSphere infrastructure.
The new version of vSphere offers VM-level disk encryption, designed to protect against unauthorised data access. This gives you the ability to manage encryption at scale using the familiar vSphere storage policy framework. vSphere can safeguard both data at-rest and in-motion with the new encrypted vMotion capability.
vSphere 6.5 adds a secure boot model to prevent unauthorised operating systems and software from loading during the startup process. This can be used when booting the hypervisor and the guest operating system.
vSphere 6.5 also delivers greater audit-quality logging capabilities, providing more forensic information about user actions. This means that IT now get more information and details about who did what, when and if an investigation into security is required.
Universal platform
vSphere 6.5 now covers more workloads that ever before, with the integration of vSphere Integrated Containers. vSphere Integrated Containers delivers an enterprise container infrastructure that provides the best of both worlds for the developers and helps customers to transform their businesses with containers without re-architecting their existing infrastructure. This is the easiest way for vSphere users to bring containers into an existing vSphere environment.
vSphere 6.5 is the foundation of VMware’s Cloud Strategy and lets you run apps from any cloud, and is available in both the private cloud and as a service through a public cloud. This is part of VMware’s vision: Any Application, Any Device on Any Cloud.
The newly announced VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware Cloud on AWS are both built on vSphere 6.5. Look out for further blog posts as we delve deep into the new features of vSphere 6.5 in the coming weeks.
Take a look at our other blogs to see what else was announced at VMworld Barcelona:
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