vCloud Director 5.1 Configuration Maximums (2036392)

Category	Maximum
Total Virtual Machines	30,000
Powered-on Virtual Machines	10,000
Total vApps	30,000
Virtual Machines per vApp	128
ESX/i Hosts	2,000
vCenter Servers	25
vCloud Director Cells	10
Total Users	10,000
Concurrent Users	1,500
Logged-in Users	5,000
Total Organizations	10,000
Users per Organization	1,000
vApps per Organization	3,000
Virtual Datacenters (VDCs)	10,000
Resource Pools per VDC	32
Datastores	1,000
Concurrent Virtual Machine Consoles	500
Logical Networks	10,000
vApp Networks	1,000
External Networks	512
Isolated VDC Networks	2,000
Direct VDC Networks	10,000
Routed VDC Networks	2,000
Gateways	1,000
Network Pools	40
Catalogs	10,000
Media	1,000
Independent Disks	1,000
Storage Classes	50
Storage Pods	100

VMware View 5.x Components

You can use VMware View with VMware vCenter Server to create desktops from virtual machines that are running on VMware ESX® or VMware ESXi™ hosts and deploy these desktops to end users. In addition, VMware View uses your existing Active Directory infrastructure for user authentication and management.

After you create a desktop, authorized end users can use Web-based or locally installed client software to securely connect to centralized virtual desktops, back-end physical systems, or terminal servers.

VMware View consists of the following major components:

■	View Connection Server – a software service that acts as a broker for client connections by authenticating and then directing incoming user requests to the appropriate virtual desktop, physical desktop, or terminal server.

■	View Agent – a software service that is installed on all guest virtual machines, physical systems, or terminal servers in order to allow them to be managed by VMware View. The agent provides features such as connection monitoring, Virtual Printing, USB support, and single sign-on.

■	View Client – a software application that communicates with View Connection Server to allow users to connect to their desktops.

■	View Client with Local Mode – a version of View Client that is extended to support the local desktop feature, which allows users to download virtual machines and use them on their local systems.

■	View Administrator – a Web application that allows View administrators to configure View Connection Server, deploy and manage desktops, control user authentication, initiate and examine system events, and carry out analytical activities.

■	vCenter Server – a server that acts as a central administrator for ESX/ESXi hosts that are connected on a network. A vCenter Server provides the central point for configuring, provisioning, and managing virtual machines in the datacenter.

■	View Composer – a software service that is installed on a vCenter server to allow VMware View to rapidly deploy multiple linked-clone desktops from a single centralized base image.

■	View Transfer Server – a software service that manages and streamlines data transfers between the datacenter and View desktops that are checked out for use on end users' local systems. View Transfer Server is required to support desktops that run View Client with Local Mode.

vSphere 5.5 New Features

Few elements introduced with 5.5 are the following:
           

·         Support for VMDK files of max. 62 TB (was 2TB) filesize for VMFS5 and NFS

·         No change in the pricing of vSphere editions.

·         4 new features: AppHA, Reliable Memory, Flash Read Cache and Big Data Extensions

·         Latency-sensitivity feature for applications like very high performance computing and stock trading apps

·         vSphere Hypervisor (free) has no physical memory limit anymore (was 32 GB)

·         Max. RAM per host 4 TB (was 2 TB)

·         Virtual CPUs per host 4096 (was 2048)

·         NUMA Nodes per host 16 (was 8)

·         Logical CPUs per host 320 (was 160)

·         PCI hotplug support for SSD

·         VMFS heap size improvements

·         16 GB End to end Fibre channel. So 16 GB from host to switch and 16 GB from switch to SAN

·         Support for 40 Gpbs NICs

·         Enhanced IPv6 support

·         Enhancements for CPU C-states. This reduces power consumption.

·         Expanded vGPU support: In vSphere 5.1 VMware only supports NVIDIA GPU. In vSphere 5.5 support for AMD and Intel GPU’s is added.

·         Three rendering modes are supported: automatic, hardware and software.

·         The ability to vMotion a virtual machine between different GPU vendors is also supported.

·         If hardware mode is enabled in the source host and GPU does not exist in the destination host, vMotion will fail and will not attempt a vMotion.

·         Added Microsoft Windows Server 2012 guest clustering support

·         AHCI Controller Support which enables Mac OS guests to use IDE CDROM drives. AHCI is an operating mode for SATA.

·         App HA is one of the most interesting features introduced within this release, allows to monitor specific applications inside guest OS and restart automatically first the service then the whole VM if the monitored service fails.

·         For now App HA supports the following applications:
      Microsoft SQL 2005, 2008, 2008R2, 2012
      Tomcat 6.0, 7.0
      TC Server Runtime 6.0, 7.0
      Microsoft IIS 6.0, 7.0, 8.0
      Apache HTTP Server 1.3, 2.0, 2.2

·         The SSO component has been also rewritten due to the well known problems in the RSA component embedded in version 5.1 and the vSphere Web Client has been improved, supports all the new features and seems much more responsive