What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1?

There are some interesting things in vsphere 5.1
I'm surprised  there is a new virtual machine format already.
One interesting thing is VMware tools updates without reboots in the future, vi client seems to be on the depreciated path, and vmotion without shared storage?
Will have to dive deeper in to the release when more info is out.






Virtual machines:
1.  New virtual machine format : version 9
2.  New features  include support for larger virtual machines, CPU performance counters and virtual shared graphics acceleration designed for enhanced performance.
3. Virtual machines can now have up to 64 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) and 1TB of virtual RAM (vRAM).
4.  Zero-downtime upgrade  for VMware  Tools: no reboots will be required for  subsequent VMware Tools upgrades.
You will need to reboot when you upgrade to this version though










Networking:
5.  vSphere Distributed Switch  (VDS)– Enhancements such as Network Health Check, Configuration Backup and Restore, Roll Back and Recovery, and Link Aggregation Control Protocol support






Availability
• vSphere vMotion – vMotion without the need for shared storage configurations.
That will be interesting
• vSphere Data Protection –  VDR replacement  : newly architected solution based EMC Avamar technology built-in deduplication.
• vSphere Replication – vSphere Replication enables efficient array-agnostic replication of virtual
machine data over the LAN or WAN.  vSphere Replication simplifies management enabling replication
at the virtual machine level and enables RPOs as low as 15 minutes.




Esxi
• vSphere Auto Deploy™ – Two new methods for deploying
That will be something to look at


Management (with vCenter Server)
• vSphere Web  Client –The vSphere Web Client is now the core administrative interface for vSphere.
So this will be replacing the vi client?
• vCenter  Single Sign-On – Dramatically simplify vSphere admin- istration by allowing users to log
in once to access all instances or layers of vCenter without the need for further
authentication.




http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsphere/vmware-what-is-new-vsphere51.pdf