Here is my pick of the VMware vSphere 5.5 cool new features:

1. Support of ~52 TB on a single vmdk allows big storage VMs, closer to real server capacities
2. The vCenter appliance now supports up to 100 hosts and 3000 VMs with the internal DB takes it into SMB plus size or moderate Development shops level
3. Official support of latest 4 virtual hardware versions reduce the need to upgrade VMware tools component, when new vSphere version ships, hence less reboots for VMs
4. Utilizing better reliable memory section in a hardware, leverages the protection for the more critical parts of the ESX hypervisor. This adds to the overall stability of the virtual VMware based data center.
5.latency issues in the hypervisor are addressed in new, easy to configure settings.
6. vSAN (beta) included in the core vSphere aiming to address the massive need for low-cost storage for VDI deployments. It allows defining VM storage needs in terms of speed, reliability, caching, raid level and other operational factors. vSAN then dynamically assigns the VM resources off the storage pools it had found avail with those capabilities. vSAN turns any local disk on any commodity ESX hardware into a part of the aggregate vSAN based datastore.

P.S

Here are some VMware vSphere 5.1 Cool features I did not have time to post about until now…They are still great!

Voma – VMFS on disk meta data analyzer finally! Checks for file system errors but does not fix them yet

New sparse disk efficient can reclaim unused guest (!!) disk space – Only for sc sparse disks and VMware View machines

Storage I/O control turned on by default to get more I/O info about VMs and assist storage DRS mechanism

You now get SSO (Single Sign On) server which you can hook to multiple Microsoft Active Directory domains as well as vCenter servers. Once you authenticate, the SSO server provides your VI Client with a certificate, it can later use to authenticate all the VMware v5.1 solutions

That’s the last time vi Client has a non web version

The new web client option has a new ‘pause’ feature allowing you stop a wizard walk through saving its data and state to continue later on as you do other actions first. Very nice time saver!

Third party plugins need update to fit the new server-based / web GUI client

That’s it for now folks! What features did you like the best?