VMware vSphere 5.5 introduces many new features
enhancements that further extend the core capabilities
of the vSphere platform. The core vSphere ESXi Hypervisor enhancements in vSphere 5.5 include the following:
• Hot-pluggable SSD PCIe devices
• Support for Reliable Memory Technology
• Enhancements to CPU C-states
Along with the core vSphere ESXi Hypervisor improvements, vSphere 5.5 provides the following virtual
machine–related enhancements:
• Virtual machine compatibility with VMware ESXi 5.5
• Expanded support for hardware-accelerated graphics vendor
• Graphic acceleration support for Linux guest operating systems
In addition, the following vCenter Server enhancements include:
• vCenter Single Sign-On Server security enhancements
• vSphere Web Client platform support and UI improvements
• vCenter Server Appliance configuration maximum increases
• Simplified vSphere App HA application monitoring
• vSphere DRS virtual machine–virtual machine affinity rule enhancements
• vSphere Big Data Extensions, a new feature that deploys and manages Hadoop clusters on vSphere from
within vCenter
vSphere 5.5 also includes the following storage-related enhancements:
• Support for 62TB VMDK
• MSCS updates
• vSphere 5.1 enhancements
• 16GB E2E support
• PDL AutoRemove
• vSphere Replication interoperability and multi-point-in-time snapshot retention
vSphere 5.5 also introduces the following networking-related enhancements:
• Improved LACP capabilities
• Traffic filtering
• Quality of Service tagging
