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VMware Infrastructure 3.5 With Update 2 (2 cds)

This new version brings a number of important features including:

* Cross-processors VMotion (auto-configuration of AMD-V Extended Migration and Intel FlexMigration) * Virtual machines live snapshot through Microsoft Volume Shadow Service (VSS) (only Windows 2003 and 2008 guest OSes) * Virtual machines live cloning * Virtual disks hot-extension (only for flat disks without snapshots in persistent mode) * VMware HA support for individual virtual machines * VirtualCenter alarms for physical servers health (single components supported) * Manual computers addition in Guided Consolidation (by hostname or IP) * Single Sign-On (SSO) on VirtualCenter client (capability to pass-through Windows authentication credentials, with support for smartcards and digital certificates) * Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Sun Solaris 10 U5, Novell SLES 10 SP2 and Ubuntu 8.04 guest OSes * Support for 8GB Fibre Channel HBAs * Support for NFS and iSCSI over 10Gbit Ethernet * Support for Remote Command Line Interface (CLI) (no more experimental)

Not all combinations of VirtualCenter and ESX Server versions are supported and not all of these highlighted features are available unless you are using VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 2 with ESX Server 3.5 Update 2. See the ESX Server, VirtualCenter, and Virtual Infrastructure Client Compatibility Matrixes for more information on compatibility. Features

* Windows Server 2008 support – Windows Server 2008 (Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions) is supported as a guest operating system. With VMware memory overcommit technology and the reliability of ESX Server, you can maximize virtual machine density with this new guest operating system to achieve the highest ROI. Guest operating system customizations and Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) are not supported with Windows Server 2008. * Enhanced VMotion Compatibility – Simplifies VMotion compatibility issues across CPU generations. Enhanced VMotion compatibility (EVC) automatically configure server CPUs with Intel FlexMigration or AMD-V Extended Migration technologies to be compatible with older servers. After EVC is enabled for a cluster in the VirtualCenter inventory, all hosts in that cluster are configured to ensure CPU compatibility for VMotion. VirtualCenter does not permit the addition of hosts that cannot be automatically configured to be compatible with those already in the EVC cluster. * Storage VMotion – Storage VMotion from an FC/iSCSI datastore to another FC/iSCSI datastore. This support is also extended on ESX Server/ESX Server 3i 3.5 Update 1. * VSS quiescing support – When creating quiesced snapshot of Windows Server 2003 guests, both filesystem and application quiescing are supported. With Windows Server 2008 guests, only filesystem quiescing is supported. For more information, see the Virtual Machine Backup Guide and the VMware Consolidated Backup 1.5 Release Notes. * Hot Virtual Extend Support – The ability to extend a virtual disk while virtual machines are running is provided. Hot extend is supported for vmfs flat virtual disks that do no have snapshots opened in persistent mode. * 192 vCPUs per Host – VMware now supports increasing the maximum number of vCPUs per host to 192 given that the maximum number of Virtual Machines per host is no more than 170 and that no more than three virtual floppy devices or virtual CDROM devices are configured on the host at any given time. This support is also extended on ESX Server 3.5 Update 1.

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