vSphere 6 officially released
blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2015/02/announcing-v...
blogs.vmware.comPosted Feb 2, 2015, 9:14 PM UTC
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blogs.vmware.comThink I will wait for at least rev a to come out before jumping.
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Update 1 or GTFO
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U1 mafia checking in
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Maybe it's time to upgrade to 5.5
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Agreed, thinking the same lol
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Maybe it's time to upgrade to 5.1
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Fault tolerance for multi-procsessors! Niiice
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Finally!
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The requirements are steep though...
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Didn't read the WHITEPAPER yet. Any details?
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From what I've seen, max 4 vCPU and minimum suggestion of 10Gbps connectivity.
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It's released, but it doesn't appear to be available to download yet.
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Announced, not released.
Got at least a month before release :)
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The link says Q1 2015 availability. Whatever that means..
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I love the build up for a big announcement. Only to have a vague time frame for actual release.
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Meaning it should be available before March 31. Ask your VMware partner if you really need it sooner, or need a firm date.
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Just in time for migrations in Q2.
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Looking for vSphere 6.0 ?
Register now and we’ll notify you when vSphere 6.0 is generally available
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Usually ...
Released = RTM
Downloadable = GA (mid-March'ish?)
EDIT: So when Pat said that vSphere is released (as he did yesterday) that doesn't mean that it is GA and downloadable for customers.
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RTM != GA for VMware.
Usually once a release goes RTM at VMware, there's another month for the OEMs and partners to find any world ending bugs with their hardware/software and to do certification tests.
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Agreed. Sorry, looked right when I typed it but reddit does funky stuff with breaks and threw it all in one line which I am not used to. Corrected.
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Any chance the thick-client will still be usable? I shudder every time I have to open the website...
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It will only manage hosts, not vCenter.
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This one is true - was surprised when I got fed up with the web client and tried to connect the 6.0 fat client to vcenter, big nope there.
The web client is certainly faster though
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it should be along with a modified web client. doesn't look like vmware's going to eliminate it just yet.
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I thought the vSphere client was gone.
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It was supposed to be after 5.1, starting with 5.5. I'm guessing community feedback delayed that.
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I'm glad. I prefer the client to the web. I'm dreading when they actually do get rid of it.
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nope. looks like [it's] still there for now in v6.0
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Good to hear.
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Deprecated..
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There is a 6.0 fat client beta version...
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There was some lip service paid to the C# client this at VMWorld, but I have little hope that they will maintain it in future versions.
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From what I can see as a vSphere 5.5 Essentials Plus user, I'm not really getting anything?
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Anyone know if there is any change with the free ESXi version?
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You'll... "love"... the standalone vSphere Web Client, i.e. the replacement for the old fat vSphere Client.
Oh yes.
Operators will stand by for assisted suicide.
The horror... the horror...
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Supposedly they're making the move to HTML5.. whether that's in this release or not, I'm not sure..
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It's not. It's still Flash, it's still slow, and it still sucks rancid donkey balls.
What they actually do is this: They start a local Tomcat server instance (!), run the Web Client inside it (taking about 1.2 GB of RAM), wrap a browser engine in a separate window and have it connect to the local server running the Web Client, then have the server connect to the host.
If that's not a big, honking "Fuck you, customers!", I don't know what is.
Oh, and it can only connect to ESXi 6.0, of course.
I'm definitely skipping 6.0, and am seriously considering recommending my customers move to the next version of Hyper-V, if Microsoft doesn't fuck it up like they always tend to do. And this is coming from someone who runs Linux on their desktop, so that's saying something.
Edit: To clarify: That disgusting mess was what was available in the beta. I hear they've included the C# client with the ability to manage a host directly in a way similar to the 5.5U2 client--you can only manage hw8 features, everything else is read-only or non-present (which means that if your VM resides on a vVol or uses an AHCI controller you're screwed if you only rely on it.)
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They dropped that local Tomcat thing in the later betas.
There are some internal projects to do it entirely on host with HTML5 that I saw at an internal demo thing thats very nice. Who knows if it will happen soon, but they realize that the goofy tomcast thing was stupid.
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NOPE! From what I'm reading its flash based......Why?!
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Just be glad it doesn't need Real Player or some other unholy 'web centric' thing.
I guess AIR would have been too much out of the browser box though.
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They made it 5x faster apparently...
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For "some" actions. Not good enough.
If they haven't fixed the horrendous workflow issues, the constant "click on one thing, action takes place on a different thing" (which is doubly fun when the prompt says "Are you sure you want to delete this VM?" without telling you which VM, since you're never sure it acted on the right VM), and the neverending "Waiting..." hangs in the task pane, it's irrelevant how fast it is.
And they hadn't in the beta.
Wrong results five times faster are still wrong results.
Additionally, five times faster doesn't cut it. Latency and overall design were the issues, not throughput.
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Or just use the fat client, which is still there? Have been running the latest 6.0 beta for months and using the fat client for local host management
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Probably still limited to do most things on the web client as long as you give them a bazillion dollars to play with it at home and if you're not happy just go for Hyper-V. That must be their train of thought. Disappointing.
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Was there a live stream or anything to demo and explain in more detail the new features this morning?
Links?
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Sessions for EMEA and non-America's tomorrow. Recorded sessions should be out there as well. The actual announcements happened this afternoon at 1pm pacific I think.
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Would this be an upgrade from 5.5 or would it require a whole new license subscription?
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If you have support then just upgrade
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[deleted]
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Huh?
Its always Referred to as SnS which is Support and Subscription Services.
They have a PDF here that has all the legaleze:
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/support/support_terms_conditions.pdf
But as is similar with most SnS I have ever seen, as long as your license is currently covered under SnS at the time the new version is released, you are immediately elligible for that new version.
So if you bought 5.5 6 months ago and you have a 1 year SnS, your licenses are still elligible for upgrade and you will get access to 6.0.
As to how you do this, if I remember right you just go to their online license manager website and hit a few buttons and 6.0 keys will spit out (once they are truly GA of course).
My point being that it has absolutely nothing to do with when the old product is retired as to when they stop providing access to new versions. Its a part of the legally binding SnS contract. So if I bought 4.x licenses and have paid every year to renew my SnS on them, they became 5.x licenses when it was released and now they will become 6.x licenses as well.
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[deleted]
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Because they ended support for the product version.
Has nothing to do with License Upgrade.
And you have to actually GO to the Licensing site and tell it to process the upgrade, I guess your boy didn't.
Basically its the same reason I can't go back and buy support for my Windows Server 2003 and then get upgrade rights to 2012.
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I have 4.1 licenses for old servers and the vmware portal will let me upgrade to 5.5
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Casper is pretty much right. Upgrading product is the result of that specific license/order being covered under SnS. You can have some 4.x licenses that are not currently under SnS, and you could have others that are under SnS. It just depends if SnS was paid for. VMware doesn't require it.
vSphere 4 is "End of General Support" as of May 2014 IIRC but you can still purchase technical support for the product. At this point though, I think it is expensive. I don't know about SnS for vSphere 4 though.
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Is this going to include a new ESXi 6.0 too or is it just the vSphere frontend?
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It will include new versions of ESXi.
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[deleted]
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Any word on licensing changes? Or will it be the same as 5.5?
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No licensing changes and no price changes
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License keys do need to be converted from 5.X to 6.0 though, per the available docs.
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The content library is what I'm really interested in. I assume it is a core part of vcenter and not a separate install like VUM. I also assume all vcenters need to be v6 to make use of it.
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I look forward (hah) to seeing the HCL, and seeing whether HP screw us again by dropping support in ESXi 6 for our G7 servers, much like they did with the G6's in ESXi 5.5..
Honestly working in IT with these technologies has made me so cynical and negative.
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Don't forget the HP recipe publications for firmware and drivers. Just because it's on the HCL doesn't mean poop.
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You should look again. There are many G6 models on the 5.5 HCL.
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There's a handful. The server we specifically wanted supported is the 585 G6. No sign on the HCL.
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True. Not a single AMD G6 server on the list for any version of vSphere.
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AMD
Well there's your problem.
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I just installed the RC on a spare pc here. Some good, some bad.
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In for link.
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I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. VMware has a bad habit of blogging about and announcing new features and then making them paid extras (like VSA and vSAN), or creating an extra tier of licenses (like they did when they created Enterprise Plus) and only giving the good stuff to users that upgrade their licensing, or announcing RAM restrictions to wring more money out of people... I'm kind of sick of it.
I love VMware's products, but I'm pretty sure their sales and licensing departments are run by Satan.
Much like microsoft..but when you have the industry by the balls, you can maximize profit in whatever way you want.
For now, I think they are going to get killed by open source hypervisors in the next few years. Maybe not in the enterprise but it's already happened in the hosting space. It's sad for me being a VCP but I honestly think Vmware is going to lose a lot of market share in the next 5 years.
I don't see SMB moving to Proxmox or hyper-v from VMware in the near future. A big advantage of VMware is that the existence of certifications makes it much easier to find people with expertise. Are there any new features the open source hypervisors have that VMware doesn't? What space are they going to lose market share?
KVM is a big one. I just don't see people paying exorbitant fees for vmware licenses when there are stable open source opportunities that are available. It might take a few years but VMware is backing themselves into a corner. For small businesses it might not have any effect but look at the leaders, AWS, Azure, KVM, whatever it is it will take a lot of market share from them. Do you see facebook or google using vmware? That's the companies that are on the bleeding edge you should look into.
I disagree. Many smbs cant deal with the licensing hoobastank that vmware makes you deal with to get features other hypervisors include for free.
I do. Hyper-V actually a number of things that you'd have to pay extra for in VMware - vMotion is a great example. The free version of hyper-v can be backed up with no issues, but the free version of ESXi won't let you back up your stuff. If you're going to host windows servers anyway, there's absolutely no reason not to look at hyper-v. Either way, I don't see why you should pay so much for the hypervisor given that there are so many good free alternatives.