Difference between vsphere 5.5 and vsphere 6 - vmware

What are the main difference between vsphere 5.5 and vsphere 6? Are there any feature additions? Are they backwards compatible?

Please check this table for a comparison

Vsphere 6/6.5 are a major departure from 5.5. There are a number of small changes but the 2 biggest you will likely notice is that in 6+ they deprecated the c# vCenter client and are moving vCenter to an in house linux based appliance system instead of hosting it on windows.

vSphere 6.5 used the HTML5 to access the vCenter data center management. access from any system in google chrome. completly deprecated the windows based Thin client.
Lot of feature added like HCI - Hyper converged infrastructure.
In this all your compute storage and Network will be integrated with single device.
You can reduce the manual task for management task. creating switch and deploying the configuration in multiple data center with same configuration. replication job will easy.
You can find more info

Related

How can I update software such as Chrome or Edge on my Azure Virtual Machines automatically?

Since we have a large number of Azure VMs, it is very time-consuming to connect to each machine and manually update software.
Is there a way to do this either automatically or at least centrally for multiple VMs?
For Windows Server 2019 updates, we use our Automation Account for update management.
Thanks for your support.
Nick
As suggested by #joelforysh we can not update automatically.
you can use Mange engine desktop central or SCCM to Schedule the software updates.
Reference

vMotion vs Active State Migration

I am in the process of evaluating vendors for upgrading our existing VMware environment. In a conversation with a provider, he told me that vMotion was not possible without a separate SAN appliance or vSAN (the latter requiring 6+ hosts and expensive licensing).
Under the impression that our 3-host cluster already had vMotion licensing and capability, I tried to "vMotion" a running Windows VM using the vSphere client. I was able to "migrate" both the VM and its disk to a new host and datastore respectively, but nowhere did I see the term "vMotion" in the Recent Tasks log at the bottom of the UI. What I did see there was "Migrating Virtual Machine - Active State" and I was able to maintain an RDC connection and interact with the VM all through the migration process.
My question: Am I misunderstanding the term vMotion? Is it different than migration in an "active state"?
Also, assuming vMotion is an unattended convenience and seeing as we already have an image-level backup solution for our VMs and my company is okay with manually restoring those VMs from a backup (as opposed to the convenience of an "instant," unattended, back-end restoration), is vMotion worth the investment in a dedicated SAN server if we're already capable of "live migration" on demand?
And don't worry about selling me on all the benefits of a SAN. Believe me, I'm already with you on that. The people over here who sign the checks just have different priorities is all.
TWIMC: We're in a 3-host cluster, ESXi 6.0 on all. Enterprise Plus licensing.
vMotion is VMware's branding for being able to migrate powered-on / running Virtual Machines from one ESX/ESXi host to another. vSphere UI does not refer to the actual operation in the UI as vMotion except for a number of places where the branding matters i.e. when configuring a feature called Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) or when enabling vMotion traffic through specific VMkernel virtual network adapter.
On the point about vSAN / physical SAN being mandatory - you already confirmed that you can migrate the VMDKs of a live VM so it's not a complete necessity. The official docs have a section about the limitations of simultaneous comput + storage migration: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost.doc/GUID-9F1D4A3B-3392-46A3-8720-73CBFA000A3C.html.
I'd bet that migration should be faster if only the memory image of a powered-on VM is migrated - this is especially true in automated DRS setups where VMs are migrated automatically based on a pre-configured policy. Users on reddit seem to have tested this - https://www.reddit.com/r/vmware/comments/matict/vmware_drs_cluster_without_shared_storage_das/gru579m/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3.
Note that I am a VMware employee (albeit not in sales), and you'd probably want a different, unbiased opinion about the product's merits ;)

Cloudstack without using vCenter

I want to deploy 10-15 VMWare hosts to cloudstack. This is my first time working with any type of cloud. I was doing research on installation and architecture, I was stuck on a point that for using VMWare hosts i have to install VCenter server, but i can't do that as it's paid. So, please guide me that is there a way of deploying these VMWare hosts on cloudstack without buying any licensed software.
Unfortunately, CloudStack does not support vSphere/ESXi without vCenter. There were several requests to support vSphere/ESXi without vCenter - however, keep in mind that many features vCenter provides must be implemented in CloudStack and it not an easy task.
If you want to remain open source and or/free, consider using Xen with XenCenter or just go pure KVM. I use to use VMware for most of my career and recently transitions to KVM - it was an easy switch and with no regrets.
CloudStack mailing lists are best to answering any setup questions you might have.
All best
-ilya
By design, vCenter is must for CloudStack to manage & build cloud over VMware ESXi hosts. It would be huge exercise to extend the support to ESXi host management without vCenter, which could be limited in features like live migration, VMware distributed virtual switches, DRS etc.
You might consider switching to XenServer which is free and very well supported seamlessly by CloudStack. Feel free discuss your deployment configuration and planning at users#cloudstack.apache.org or dev#cloudstack.apache.org.

Making Gephi run on a hosted Microsoft server

Has anyone had success with running Gephi on a Microsoft server? I get the issue "OpenGl 1.1.0" too low version. I need OpenGl 1.5 according to Gephi. As I don't have a support plan, getting in touch with MS is a pain.
The alternative is to purchase a pc, but I would prefer a shared setup as we are multiple analysts who aim to run multiple analyses ad hoc and so benefits from a scalable server setup. Any other alternative suggestions are well received.
The only solution I found was to purchase a PC with a newer graphics card (= newer version of OpenGl).

WSO2 / Mule vs OpenStack / CloudStack - what are the differences, similarities, benefits?

I've started my journey with cloud related technologies very recently. I'm trying to understand the basics as to be able to prepare the foundation for a basic cloud setup in my Internet of Things oriented company.
While browsing the Internet I've stumbled upon the following two groups of open source projects:
WSO2 / Mule / ...
OpenStack / CouldStack / Eucalyptus / ...
I'm trying to understand:
what kind of service do they offer? (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, other?)
what are the differences between them?
what do they have in common?
how do the play with other cloud related technologies like Amazon AWS?
which one would you recommend to get some basic experience and for some early proof-of-concept? (I'm looking for the easiest option first)
Cloud stack and Open stack are open source softwares designed to manage, deploy virtual machines and networks which can deliver cloud services. Mainly these provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). There are alot of comparisons on the internet on these two. So these softwares needs to be intalled on your hardware and maintain it and you provide a cloud service from it. When it comes Amazon AWS it is a readily available service where you don't do installations or maintain hardware, you just take service from them.
WSO2 and MuleSoft are different from above two and they are software platforms where several products(such as ESB). Both provide cloud platform facilities to deploye their products.
We cannot say which one to use but base on your requirements you may choose one or two (WSO2 products deployed on Amazon AWS or WSO2 products deployed on CloudStack VM's). Since you are willing to set up Internet of things, i think you may need to refer about products provided by above providers. Following source [1] will give you an idea about Iot platform setup by several free open source WSO2 products.
[1] http://wso2.com/landing/internet-of-things/