VMware recently announced the release of vSphere 8.0 Update 1 (build 21495797) bringing several new features and improvements for virtualized workload management. In this short post, we’ll explore the highlights of this new release and what it can bring to your environment.
Enhance Operational Efficiency
- vSphere Configuration Profile: vSphere Configuration Profiles is a new capability that allows administrators to manage host configuration at a cluster level.
- Support for Heterogeneous vGPU Profiles on the Same GPU Hardware: It is now possible to mix different types of workloads on a GPU.
- Integration of Skyline Health and Diagnostics with vCenter: Deployment and integration of Skyline Health and Diagnostics within vCenter is now supported, making it easier for customers to troubleshoot vCenter and ESXi issues.
- Flexible & Customizable VM Images: VMware VM Service has been enhanced to provide support for customer-created VM images.
- VM Consoles for DevOps: DevOps users can easily access virtual machine remote consoles, for virtual machines they have deployed, using kubectl.
Supercharge Workload Performance:
- NVSwitch Enablement: For up to 8 GPUs per host, vSphere now supports the deployment of NVIDIA NVSwitch technology, greatly improving large-sized AI/ML workload performance.
- Supervisor Services on Distributed Switches: Supervisor Services are now available when using the vSphere Distributed Switch networking stack. Supervisor Services are vSphere certified Kubernetes operators that deliver Infrastructure-as-a-Service components and tightly-integrated Independent Software Vendor services to developers. You can install and manage Supervisor Services on the vSphere with Tanzu environment so that to make them available for use with Kubernetes workloads.
- VM Level Green Metrics Enablement (Power Consumption): This enhancement will provide VM-level power consumption, whereas earlier, only cumulative host-level power consumption for all the VMs was available.
Elevate Security:
- Okta Identity Federation for vCenter: This capability will enable federated identity management with Okta for vCenter (more providers to come in future releases)
- Support for Fault Tolerance of VM using virtual TPM (vTPM) module: With this capability, Fault Tolerance for a VM employing a vTPM module is now supported.
- Quick Boot support for servers that utilize TPM 2.0 chip: With this capability enhancement, TPM 2.0 does not need to be disabled for Quick Boot
If you want to learn more about vSphere 8.0 Update 1, refer to the release notes: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/8.0/rn/vsphere-esxi-801-release-notes/index.html
