As we have all been hearing about VMware’s new version of vSphere 7, finally it has been released on 2nd of April 2020. Back in March VMware has had a huge announcement about the new version and the new app transformation initiative by them. I was a part of bloggers early access program which gave me insight into these new features.

vCenter 7 and vSphere 7 has always been the heart of the VMware technology, they have taken it a step further by integrating them with Kubernetes. However, it will be a part of VMware Cloud Foundation 4.

You can download the new release from the links below:

vCenter 7 = https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=VC700&productId=974&rPId=45006

ESX 7 = https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?downloadGroup=ESXI700&productId=974&rPId=45006

to learn more about the new features of vCenter 7 and ESX 7 you can watch this YouTube video which covers some of the cool stuff.

Some of the new features are given below:

VMware Cloud Foundation 4

vCenter Server Profiles

Content Library with version control

New and improved DRS

vSphere 7 and vSGX Intel Software Guard Extension

One of the new features of vCenter 7, is vCenter Server profiles. You may wonder What is vCenter Server Profiles? is it similar to ESXi host profile?

vCenter Server Profiles is where we can export the configuration of vCenter Server, that can be management, network or authentication in the form of JSON file, then we can make changes to the JSON file and import it to different vCenters to keep all of your vCenters consistent.

Using this method we get consistent configuration across all vCenter Servers. This is really helpful if we have multiple vCenter servers in your enterprise environment, now we can use the vCenter Server Profiles to keep the configuration consistent across all the vCenter servers.

Note: don’t be confused with ESXi host profiles as this is not related to ESX at all.

Benefits:

1. Profiles can import & export vCenter Server configuration via REST APIs (management, network, authentication, and user configurations)
2. Exported configurations can be imported to other vCenter Servers
3. Profiles can maintain version control between vCenter Servers
4. Easily revert to the last known good configuration by importing
   a valid vCenter Server Profile

Currently, this is based on REST API, we will be using the API call. Unfortunately, we do not have UI for this.

Source and Target vCenter Servers

• Export the JSON
• Modify the config Appliance config, Network Config or User and Privileges
• Validate the result can be Valid or Invalid.

During the process of import, we will know if we have any errors in the JSON file. or any configuration error made during the manual update.

. We can export the configuration to multiple vCetner Servers the maximum number of vCenters is 100.

Scripting and Automation

Another advantage is because its API driven it is consumable by Ansible Puppet or chef. We can validate the JSON then import it back to the new vCenter.

Conclusion:

I definitely think this is a really good feature the demand for servers are increasing and if you are an organization that has multiple vCetner servers it will become easy to keep the consistency on all the vCenter Servers.

Note: vCenter Server profiles is also known as Infrastructure profiles or Infra profiles

As a part vExpert program I have been lucky to be able to get the insight I am very excited to share with you, lot of other bloggers and vExperts who will be sharing the content so keep an eye out for it.

Some of the topic I have covered are given below click on the links below:

VMware Cloud Foundation 4

vCenter Server Profiles

Content Library with version control

New and improved DRS

vSphere 7 and vSGX Intel Software Guard Extension

With the new release with vCetner 7, there is a new and improved Distributed Resource Scheduler ( DRS ) and in this post, we will go through some comparison with the original DRS and the new DRS.

In the Orignal DRS which has been there since VMware introduced, no doubt there has been enhancements and additions to it example we only had Compute DRS later VMware added Storage DRS leveraging vMotion and Storage vMotion of course

Orginal DRS Cluster centric

Runs every 5 minutes

Uses Cluster -wide Standard

Uses Cluster-wide Standard deviation model

VMware has done great thinking about how the new DRS 2.0 should work and they have changed the algorithm to work on the modern application.

The New DRS is Workload Centric so instantly we get better performance

Improved DRS

Workload Centric

Runs every 1 minute

Use the VM DRS score based on granted memory (New Matrix)

Let’s discuss how this new DRS works a little bit. VMware has started using a new matrix for workload, or VM. its called VMDRS Score

Improved DRS using VM DRS Score

VM DRS is necessary because with the modern-day application we need to focus on the VM / Workload perform as appose to cluster performance which the Orignal DRS cared about.

so we have a fundamental change on the way the improved DRS works using VM DRS score which is the foundation of the DRS. lets a closer look at it.

we already explained that the new improved DRS runs every 1 minute.

We have in the UI a lower bucket score from 0 to 20 % or 20 to 40% whenever we see another host can give a lower bucket score the DRS considers moving the VM.

the vm DRS score is calculated using a lot of matrices. example CPU ready time, capacity, headroom of ESXi host. network utilization.

Finally, it also checks the migration cost of the VM. ie how much network resource is going to be used in doing this migration if its going to expensive or performance constrains DRS migration will not take place.

To learn more about new features with vSphere 7 and vCenter 7 click on the links below:

VMware Cloud Foundation 4

vCenter Server Profiles

Content Library with version control

New and improved DRS 2.0

vSphere 7 and vSGX Intel Software Guard Extension

vCenter Server Upgrade Planner

Improved vMotion