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The following components form the foundation of vSphere 6.5 environment and its management:
ESXi Hypervisor is the abstraction layer that enables running of different virtual machines sharing the same physical hardware resources. VMware ESXi 6.5 has significant scalability enhancements. Let's compare and contrast the scalability improvements since ESXi 5.5:
| Feature | vSphere 5.5 | vSphere 6.0 | vSphere 6.5 |
| Logical processors (CPUs) | 320 | 480 | 576 |
| Physical memory | 4 TB | 6 TB – 12 TB | 12 TB |
| NUMA nodes | 16 | 16 | 16 |
| vCPUs | 4,096 | 4,096 | 4,096 |
| Storage LUNs per host | 256 | 256 | 512 |
| VMFS datastore per host | 256 | 256 | 512 |
| Virtual machines per host | 512 | 1,024 | 1,024 |
Refer to the VMware vSphere 6.5 Configuration Maximums guide for more information regarding the scalability maximums at https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere6/r65/vsphere-65-configuration-maximums.pdf.
A brief insight into all the new features made available with vSphere 6.5 has been put together in the VMware's technical whitepaper What's New in VMware vSphere® 6.5 at http://bit.ly/vSphere65WhatsNew. Although I have shortened the URL for your benefit, you can always Google for the title text to find this whitepaper.
As the whitepaper introduces the components pretty neatly, we will not be doing the same in this book. This book will introduce you to the new changes in the respective chapters.
Unlike the previous releases wherein although the appliance was a neater solution, it still lacked something in terms of features and functionalities. Not every aspect of the vSphere management element layer was integrated into the appliance, but that is about to change with vSphere 6.5. VMware vCenter 6.5 Appliance (vCenter Server Virtual Appliance (vCSA)) is the new king. It has features that are not available with the Windows version of vCenter. Features such as Native High Availability (NHA) and Native Backup and Restore (NBR) are only available with the appliance version of vCenter Server. We will cover NHA and NBR in Chapter 2, Greenfield Deployment of vSphere 6.5.
One component that always stayed out of the box was vCenter Update Manager (VUM). It was always required to have it installed on a Windows machine. VUM is now available as a component integrated into vCSA.
The vCSA Management has also been greatly improved, especially providing more insight into the built-in PostgreSQL database and its usage. VMware is slowly moving away from its dependence on Microsoft SQL and Oracle database instances.
VMware has bundled the essential services, such as the Single Sign-On (SSO), Inventory Service, and certificate management, into a single manageable solution named the Platform Services Controller (PSC). The PSC can be installed on the same machine as the vCenter, installed on a separate supported Windows machine, or run as an integrated component of the vCSA. Refer VMware KB Article 2147672 for supported topologies(https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2147672).
SSO is an authentication gateway, which takes the authentication requests from various registered components and validates the credential pair against the identity sources added to the SSO server. The components are registered to the SSO server during their installation. We will delve deeper into PSC, and its components in Chapter 2, Greenfield Deployment of vSphere 6.5.
vCenter Update Manager (VUM) is a solution that is used to upgrade or patch your vSphere environment. Keep in mind though that it can only be used to patch/upgrade ESXi hosts and perform some additional tasks, such as VMware tools and virtual machine hardware upgrade. Starting with vSphere 6.5, VUM is no longer required to be installed on Windows machines. It is now fully integrated into the vCenter Appliance and is enabled by default. Also, its reliance on the vSphere C#-based client has been removed. It can now be fully operated using the vSphere Web Client. You will learn more about VUM in Chapter 14, Upgrading and Patching Using vSphere Update Manager.
