VMworld 2013 Kyle Gleed, VMware Cormac Hogan, VMware Learn more about VMworld and register at http://www.vmworld.com/index.jspa?src=socmed-vmworld-slideshare

1. What's New in vSphere Platform & Storage
Kyle Gleed, VMware
Cormac Hogan, VMware
VSVC5005
#VSVC5005

2. 2
Agenda
New vSphere Platform Features
New vCenter Server Features
New vSphere Storage Features

3. 3
vSphere 2013 Platform Features

4. 4
vSphere 5.5 Platform Improvements
 Scalability
• Doubled several configuration maximums
• Virtual Machine Compatibility ESXi 5.5 (aka Virtual Hardware Version 10)
 Performance
• Expanded vGPU support
• Improved power management with support for server CPU C-States
 Availability
• Hot-Pluggable SSD PCIe devices
• Support for Reliable Memory

5. 5
 Several vSphere 5.5 maximums doubled
• Logical CPU, Virtual CPU, NUMA Nodes, RAM
 Virtualize any size workload with confidence
Item 5.1 5.5
Logical CPUs per host 160 320
NUMA Nodes per host 8 16
Virtual CPUs per host 2048 4096
RAM per host 2TB 4TB
vSphere Host Configuration Maximums Increased

6. 6
Virtual Machine Compatibility ESXi 5.5
• aka Virtual Hardware 10
• LSI SAS for Solaris 11
• Latest CPU Architectures
• Advanced Host Controller Interface
(AHCI)
• New SATA controller
• Virtual disks and CDROM
• 30 devices per controller
• 4 controllers per VM
• Total of 120 devices per VM

7. 7
Expanded vGPU Support
 Added support for AMD GPUs
• NVIDIA available since 5.1
 Three rendering modes:
• Automatic = Use GPU when
available, otherwise use software
rendering
• Hardware = GPU is required
• Power-on fails if no GPU
• vMotion check fails if no GPU at
destination
• Software = don’t use GPU,
software rendering only
 vMotion between GPU vendors

8. 8
Expanded vGPU Support Cont.
 vGPU Requirements:
• AMD or NVIDA Graphics Card (GPU)
• See vendor websites for supported cards
• 3D graphics must be supported by the guest operating system
• http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php
• Virtual Machine:
• Compatibility ESXi 5.0 or higher (vHW 8) (Windows 8 must be vHW 9)
• VMware Tools must be installed
• Linux distributions must have a 3.2 or later kernel
• Most modern Linux distributions package our drivers by default
• VMware is the only vendor accelerating the entire Linux graphics driver stack and
providing it as free software!

9. 9
Hot-Pluggable SSD PCIe Devices
 No downtime to Hot-Plug PCIe SSD drives (add/remove) on a
running ESXi host
• PCIe IO expansion chassis to provide Hot-Plug of PCIe devices to an ESXi host
 Support both orderly and surprise hot-plug operations
• Orderly operation initiated through hardware elements or software interface
• Surprise operation initiated by physically removing or adding device without
notifying the system
 Requirements
• Hardware and BIOS must support Hot-Plug PCIe

10. 10
Support for Reliable Memory
 Reduce memory corruption
• Memory corruption = PSOD = BAD!
• Provider greater uptime and reliability for ESXi
 How does it work?
• Feature of the hardware
• Some memory is more “reliable” than others which is reported up to ESXi for
optimization
 Protecting Critical Components:
• VMkernel
• UW (User Worlds)
• Init thread
• Hostd and Watchdog

11. 11
Enhancements for CPU C-States
 Use deep C-states in default Balanced Policy
• Saves much more power
• Can potentially increase performance by quickly entering Turbo Mode
frequencies if some other core(s) in the same physical CPU are in deep C-
State
 More aggressive settings in Low Power Policy
• More eager to enter deeper C-states
 USB Auto-suspend
• Automatically put idle USB hubs in a lower power state
• Unused port doesn’t draw much power
• BUT, the controller still DMAs

12. 12
Summary vSphere Platform Features
 vSphere configuration maximum increases
• 2x increase from vSphere 5.1
 Virtual Machine Compatibility ESXi 5.5 (vHW 10)
• LSI SAS for Solaris 11, New CPU Enablement, AHCI SATA Controller Support
 Expanded vGPU support
• Support AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, vMotion across GPU vendors
 Hot-Plug SSD PCIe devices
• Hot Add/Remove SSD Devices without any downtime
 Support for Reliable Memory
• Improved uptime and reliability
 Reduced power consumption with enhancements for CPU C-States

13. 13
vSphere 2013 vCenter Server Features

14. 14
vCenter Server 5.5 Improvements
 Security
• Improved vCenter Single Sign On
 Usability
• vSphere Web Client enhancements
• Increased platform support
 Availability
• App HA

15. 15
vCenter Server 5.5 – Single Sign-On
 New vCenter Single Sign On
• Improved installation experience
• Improved Active Directory integration
• One-way and two-way trust
• Multi and single forest
• Built-in high availability
• Continued support for local authentication
• No manual database configuration
• SQL authentication no longer required
• No longer require creating DB user accounts

16. 16
vCenter Server 5.5 – Web Client
 vSphere Web Client
• Increased Platform Support
• Added support for OS X
• VM Console access
• Deploy OVF Templates
• Attach Client Devices
• Enhanced Usability Experience
• Drag and Drop
• Improved Filters
• Recent Items

17. 17
vSphere 2013 vCenter App HA

18. 18
vSphere App HA
 Protects apps running inside virtual machines
 Provides application visibility, monitoring and restart
 Allows for automated recovery from:
• Host failure, guest OS crash, application failure
 Protected applications:
• Apache Tomcat 6.0, 7.0
• IIS 6.0, 7.0, 8.0
• MSSQL 2005, 2008, 2008R2, 2012
• TC Server Runtime 6.0, 7.0
• Apache HTTP Server 1.3, 2.0, 2.2

19. 19
vSphere App HA Policy

20. 20
vSphere App HA Application Availability

21. 21
vSphere HA VM-to-VM Anti-Affinity
 vSphere HA in vSphere 5.5
vSpherevSpherevSphere
vSphere HA/DRS Cluster
DRS Affinity Rule:
VMs must not run
on the same host

22. 22
vSphere APP HA
 Summary
• Reduce Application downtime
• Protection for several off-the-shelf
applications
• Recovery from a variety of scenarios
• VM-to-VM Anti-Affinity
• Optimal workload placement
 More Information
• BCO5047 – vSphere HA – What’s New
and Best Practices

23. 23
vSphere 2013 Storage Features

24. 24
New features in vSphere Storage
 Scalability
• Support for 62TB VMDK
 Performance
• 16Gb E2E support
• vSphere Flash Read Cache (vFRC)
 Availability
• MSCS Supportability Enhancements
• Storage vMotion & SDRS compatibility with
vSphere Replication
 Operations
• PDL Enhancements
• VAAI UNMAP Enhancements
• VMFS Heap Enhancements

25. 25
 62TB VMDK
• Supported on VMFS5 & NFS
• No specific virtual hardware requirement
• Requires ESXi 5.5
 62TB Virtual Mode RDMs also
introduced in 5.5
• No change in 64TB pRDMs
Support for Larger VMDK & vRDMs

26. 26
Support for Larger VMDK & vRDMs
 Supported
• NFS & VMFS
• Offline extension of 2TB+ VMDK
• vMotion
• Storage vMotion
• SRM/vSphere Replication
• vFlash
• Snapshots
• Linked Clones
• SE Sparse Disks
 Not Supported
• Online/hot extension of 2TB+ VMDK
• BusLogic Virtual SCSI Adapters
• Virtual SAN (VSAN)
• Fault Tolerance
• VI (C#) Client
• MBR Partitioned Disks
• vmfsSparse Disks
• vSphere 5.5 introduces support for 62TB VMDKs & Virtual RDMs

27. 27
Heads Up! C# Client Interoperability
 SRM
• 2TB+ VMDK can be
managed successfully via
vSphere web client.
• SRM still requires C#
client for management
• Attempting to examine
62TB VMDK properties
via C# client can cause
errors:
All new features/enhances supported via web client

28. 28
16Gb E2E Support
 With the release of vSphere 5.5, VMware now supports 16Gb E2E (end-
to-end) Fibre Channel
16Gb
16Gb

29. 29
MSCS - Microsoft Cluster Services Enhancements
MSCS
Node A
MSCS
Node B
Microsoft
Windows 2012
Clustering
supported
Round Robin
Path Policy
Supported
Round Robin
Path Policy
Supported
FCoE & iSCSI protocols supported

30. 30
PDL AutoRemove
PDL (Permanent Device Loss)
 Occurs on failures or is incorrectly removed from host
 Based on SCSI Sense Codes
 PDL means host no longer sends I/O to these devices
PDL AutoRemove in 5.5
 PDL AutoRemove automatically removes a device with PDL from the host
Benefit of PDL AutoRemove
 A PDL state on a device implies it cannot accept more IOs, but needlessly uses
up one of the 256 device per host limit.
 Now device is automatically removed since it is never coming back.

31. 31
VAAI UNMAP Improvements
 vSphere 5.5 introduced a new simpler VAAI UNMAP/Reclaim command
• # esxcli storage vmfs unmap
• Reclaim size now specified in blocks rather than a percentage value
• Dead space reclaimed in increments rather than all at once

32. 32
VMFS Heap Improvements
 An issue with previous versions of VMFS heap meant that there were
concerns when accessing above 30TB of open files from a single ESXi
host.
 ESXi 5.0p5 & 5.1U1 introduced a larger heap size to deal with this.
 vSphere 5.5 introduces a much improved heap eviction process,
meaning that there is no need for the larger heap size, which consumes
memory.
 vSphere 5.5 with a maximum of 256MB of heap allows ESXi hosts to
access all address space of a 64TB VMFS.

33. 33
Storage DRS, Storage vMotion & vSphere Replication Interop
 If a VM which was being replicated via vSphere Replication was
migrated to another datastore, it triggered a full sync because the
persistent state files (psf) were deleted – all of the disks contents are
read and check summed on each side.
 In vSphere 5.5 the psf files are now moved with the virtual machine and
retain its current replication state.
 This means that virtual machines at the production site may now be
Storage vMotion’ed, and conversely, participate in Storage DRS
datastore clusters without impacting vSphere Replication’s RPO
(Recovery Point Objective).

34. 34
What is vSphere Flash Read Cache?
Key Features
• Hypervisor-based software-defined flash
storage tier solution.
• Aggregates local flash devices to provide a
clustered flash resource for VM and
vSphere hosts consumption (Virtual Flash
Host Swap Cache)
• Leverages local flash devices as a cache
• Integrated with vCenter, HA, DRS, vMotion
• Scale-Out Storage Capability: 32 nodes
SSD SSD SSD SSD
vSphere Flash Read Cache Infrastructure
vSphere Flash
Read Cache
vSphere Flash
Read Cache
vSphere Flash
Read Cache
vSphere
SSD
Flash as a New Storage Tier in vSphere

35. 35
Why vSphere Flash Read Cache?
• Cache is a high-speed memory that can be either a reserved section of
main memory or a storage device.
• Supports Write Through Cache Mode
• Improve virtual machines performance by leveraging local flash devices
• Ability to virtualize suitable business critical applications
Write
Commit
Ack
3
2
Write Through
1
Cache

36. 36
vSphere Flash Read Cache Fully Integrated with vSphere
• All the management tasks pertaining to the installation, configuration &
monitoring of vSphere Flash Read Cache will be done from the vSphere client.

37. 37
vSphere Flash Read Cache – Flash Resource
• Each host creates a Virtual
Flash Resource containing
one or multiple flash based
devices.
• There can only be one Virtual
Flash Resource per vSphere
host.
• Flash based devices are
pooled into a new file system
called VFFS.

38. 38
• Virtual Flash Host Swap Cache configuration is only available via the vSphere
Web Client.
• Ability to utilize up to 4TB of vSphere Flash Resource for vSphere Flash Swap
Caching purposes.
vSphere Flash Read Cache – Virtual Flash Host Swap Cache

39. 39
• Virtual Machine Virtual Flash Read Cache
configuration is only available via the
vSphere Web Client.
• Configure Virtual Flash Read Cache per
VMDK – set to match working set size.
• Block Size 4KB – 1024 KB
vSphere Flash Read Cache – Virtual Machine Flash Cache

40. 40
Virtual SAN: Radically Simple Storage
• Policy-driven per-VM SLA
• vSphere & vCenter integration
• Scale-out storage
• Built-in resiliency
• SSD caching
• Converged Compute & Storage
Key Features
vSphere
Hard
disks
SSD
VSAN
Hard
disks
SSD
..…3 to 8…
Hard
disks
SSD Hard
disks
SSD
VSAN Aggregated Datastore

41. 41
Virtual SAN: Radically Simple Storage
• Radically Simple Storage designed
for Virtual Machines
• Fast, Resilient & Dynamic
• Lower TCO for comparable
performance
Customer Benefits
vSphere
Hard
disks
SSD
VSAN
Hard
disks
SSD
..…3 to 8…
Hard
disks
SSD Hard
disks
SSD
VSAN Aggregated Datastore

42. 42
vSphere Storage Features Summary
 Support for 62TB VMDK
 16Gb E2E support
 MSCS supportability enhancements
 PDL Autoremove
 Storage vMotion and SDRS compatibility with vSphere Replication
 VAAI UNMAP & VMFS Heap enhancements
 vSphere Flash Read Cache
 Virtual SAN

43. 43
Other VMware Activities Related to This Session
 HOL:
HOL-SDC-1310 vSOM 101
HOL-SDC-1308 vSphere Flash Read Cache and VSAN
 Group Discussions:
VSVC1003-GD vSphere Core Upgrades with Kyle Gleed
STO1001-GD VSAN with Cormac Hogan & VMware R&D

44. 44
Thank You

45. What's New in vSphere Platform & Storage
Kyle Gleed, VMware
Cormac Hogan, VMware
VSVC5005
#VSVC5005