What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1?

vSphere 5.1 is VMware’s latest release of its industry-leading  virtualization platform. This new release contains the following  new features and enhancements:

Compute

• Larger virtual machines – Virtual machines can grow two  times larger than in any previous release to support even the  most advanced applications. Virtual machines can now have  up to 64 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) and 1TB of virtual RAM (vRAM).

• New virtual machine format – New features in the  virtual machine format (version 9) in vSphere 5.1 include  support for larger virtual machines, CPU performance  counters and virtual shared graphics acceleration designed   for enhanced performance.

Storage

• Flexible, space-efficient storage for virtual  desktop infrastructure (VDI) – A new disk format  enables the correct balance between space efficiency and I/O  throughput for the virtual desktop.

Network

• vSphere Distributed Switch – Enhancements such as  Network Health Check, Configuration Backup and Restore,  Roll Back and Recovery, and Link Aggregation Control Protocol support and deliver more enterprise-class networking functionality and a more robust foundation for cloud computing.

• Single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) support – Support for SR-IOV optimizes performance for sophisticated applications.