Table Updated: Feb 2017
| vSphere 4.0 | vSphere 4.1 | vSphere 5.0 | vSphere 5.1 | vSphere 5.5 | vSphere 6.0 | vSphere 6.5 | |
| Hypervisor | ESX & ESXi | ESX & ESXi | ESXi | ESXi | ESXi | ESXi | ESXi |
| CPUs per host | 64 | 160 | 160 | 160 | 320 | 480 | 576 |
| RAM per host | 1 TB | 1 TB | 2 TB | 2 TB | 4 TB | 12 TB | 12 TB |
| vCPU per VM | 8 | 8 | 32 | 64 | 64 | 128 | 128 |
| vMEM per VM | 255 GB | 255 GB | 1 TB | 1 TB | 1 TB | 4 TB | 6 TB |
| VMDK Size | 2TB | 2TB | 2TB | 2TB | 62 TB | 62 TB | 62 TB |
| Cluster Size | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 64 | 64 |
| FT Max vCPU | 1 vCPU | 1 vCPU | 1 vCPU | 1 vCPU | 1 vCPU | 4 vCPU | 4 vCPU |
| VM Hardware Version | 7 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 13 |
| VMFS Version | 3.33 | 3.46 | 5.54 | 5.58 | 5.60 | 5.61 | 6.81 |
| New Features | – Distributed Switch – Update Manager – Fault tolerance – Host Profiles – Storage vMotion – Linked Mode – Enhanced vMotion – Compatibility – Distributed Power Management – Hot Add VM CPU/Memory – VMDirectPath – VMXNET3 |
– Boot from SAN – Scripted Installation – Storage I/O Control – DRS Host Affinity – Memory Compression – Array Integration – Network I/O Control |
– Auto Deploy – Storage DRS – vSphere Storage Appliance – Profile driven storage – vSphere Web Client – vCenter Server Appliance – ESXi Firewall |
– Single Sign-On – Enhanced vMotion – Sparse Virtual Disks – Single-root I/O Virtualization – vSphere Replication – vSphere Data Protection – vShield Endpoint |
– vSphere Flash Read Cache – Virtual SAN – Reliable Memory Technology – vSphere Big Data Extensions – vCenter Single Sign-On 2.0 – vSphere App HA – 40GBps NIC Support |
– Virtual Volumes – vMotion across vSwitches – Cross vCenter vMotion – Native Linked Mode – Platform Services Controller – Certificate Authority (VMCA) – Content Library |
– vCenter Migration – vCenter Server High Availability – vCenter Backup and Restore – REST API – Virtual Machine Encryption – Encrypted vMotion – Audit Logging – Proactive HA – HA Orchestrated Restart – Automated UNMAP – vSphere Integrated Containers |
| Management | C# Client | C# Client | C# Client Web Client |
C# Client Web Client |
C# Client Web Client |
C# Client Web Client |
Web Client HTML5 Client |
| Authentication Management | – | – | – | Single Sign-On | Single Sign-On 5.5 | Platform Services Controller | Platform Services Controller |
| Backup Strategy | VMware Data Recovery (VDR) | vSphere Data Protection (VDP) | |||||
| vMotion Support | – Boundary: Datacenter – Shared Storage required – max. 5ms RTT |
– Boundary: Datacenter – Shared Storage required – max. 10ms RTT |
– Boundary: Datacenter – max. 10ms RTT |
– Boundary: Datacenter – max. 10ms RTT |
– vMotion across vCenters – vMotion across vSwitches – max. 100ms RTT |
||
| Virtual SAN | – | – | – | – | VSAN 5.5 | VSAN 6.0 VSAN 6.2 |
VSAN 6.5 |
| HA Agent | AAM Automatic Availability Manager |
FDM Fault Domain Manager |
|||||
| VAAI Primitives | – | – Atomic Test & Set – Cloning Blocks – Zeroing File Blocks |
– Atomic Test & Set – Cloning Blocks – Zeroing File Blocks – UNMAP – Quota Exceeded Behavior – TP LUN Reporting – NFS Full File Clone – NFS Space Reservation – NFS Extended Stat – NFS Space Reclaim – NFS Fast File Clone |
||||
| vCenter Type | Windows | Windows | Windows Linux (vCSA) |
Windows Linux (vCSA) |
Windows Linux (vCSA) |
Windows Linux (vCSA) |
Windows Linux (vCSA) |
| vCSA Scale (vPostgres) | – | – | 5 Hosts 50 VMs |
5 Hosts 50 VMs |
100 Hosts 3000 VMs |
1000 Hosts 10000 VMs |
2000 Hosts 25000 VMs |
