What’s new with vCenter in vSphere 7
If you have been following this blog series on vSphere 7 we have been covering new features and changes to the architecture. Here are the previous blogs in the series:
What’s new with Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) in vSphere 7
vMotion Enhancements in vSphere 7
vCenter 7
In this blog I will be looking at what has changed and what is new with vSphere 7 vCenter.
- vCenter 7 can only be deployed as a virtual appliance (VCSA – vCenter Server Appliance).
- To upgrade from vCenter Server 5.0, 5.1, 5.5, or 6.0 you must first upgrade the vCenter Server instance to version 6.5 or later releases, and then upgrade to vCenter Server 7.0.
- vSphere 7 can manage ESXi 6.5 and ESXi 7 host. ESXi 6 is not supported. I believe the limitation is due to the significant changes made in the vSphere 7 architecture.
- The Flash-based vSphere Web Client is no longer supported.
- vSphere 7 still supports the fully functional HTML5 vSphere Client.
- The new virtual watchdog timer (vWDT) introduced in vSphere 7 is a guest OS monitoring tool. It allows administrators and developers to know if the OS or application has crashed. I have been waiting for this type of functionality for years. My favorite component of this new feature is the ability to reset a VM if the OS or application has crashed.
- Here is the link to maximums configuration for VM and ESXi host: Configuration Maximums for vSphere 7
- vCenter Server Upgrade Planner which is now part of Lifecycle Manager, uses vSphere Lifecycle Manager to notify a system administrator about potential problems with updates and automates much of the patching.
- In vSphere 7, VMware Update Manager has been deprecated and now LifeCycle Manager is used for installing updates, patches and upgrades, and applying ESXi host profiles.
- VMware vSphere 7 supports multifactor authentication (MFA) by using Identity Federation.
Summary
vSphere 7 offers a variety of new features and enhancements. In this blog, we focused on vMotion improvements for large VMs. In future blogs in this series, we will examine other vSphere 7 features and enhancements, so check back soon.
