After more than 18,000 downloads of the IA release of vSphere 8 with smooth installations, VMware is proud to announce that vSphere 8 is now GA on Nov 8, 2022, and is now available for download.
What’s New in vSphere 8?
VMware vSphere 8 is an enterprise workload platform that offers the benefits of the cloud for on-premises workloads. It boosts performance with DPU and GPU-based acceleration, increases operational efficiency through the VMware Cloud Console, seamlessly integrates with complementary hybrid cloud services, and accelerates innovation with an integrated, enterprise-ready Kubernetes runtime that runs containers alongside VMs.
VM Hardware Version 20
VMware vSphere 8 is introduced with VM hardware version 20, which allows you to use the latest features of the latest version of vSphere, including:
- Application-aware migration
- High latency sensitivity with hyperthreading
- Support for the latest guest operating systems (OS), including Windows 11
vSphere Distributed Services Engine in vSphere 8
VMware vSphere 8 introduces the Distributed Services Engine module for working with data processing units. This can reduce the load on the central processing unit (CPU).
Data processing units (DPUs) are a new class of programmable processors based on the ARM architecture that can be used alongside CPUs and GPUs (graphics processing units) for computing operations mainly related to networking and communications.
The DPU is embedded in a smart NIC that connects to the motherboard. This new approach enables virtual environments built on vSphere 8 to improve network performance and reduce CPU load for network operations.
Smart NICs are much more powerful than traditional NICs (Network Interface Controllers) and are especially useful in VMware NSX. According to VMware, DPU can now free up to 20% of CPU load. Faster transaction speed, lower latency and security benefits are the benefits you get with this feature.
Also Read: Virtualization: The Foundation of Cloud Computing
The NSX Distributed Firewall will now use DPUs optimized for east-west network traffic, which is more common in modern virtualized data centers. This approach will reduce the load of security operations from the CPU to the DPU.
Before its release, VMware vSphere on DPU was called Project Monterey and was implemented in collaboration with hardware manufacturers such as Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, and OEM system partners.
Lifecycle Management
VMware vSphere 8 also includes new changes to lifecycle management.
VMware vSphere Configuration Profile: It is a new alternative to VMware Host Profile that allows you to use the desired state model for host configuration, associate a configuration profile to a group, and use it. You can now define a configuration for a group and apply that configuration to all child objects as an ESXi host instead of attaching a profile-level configuration to each ESXi host.
Staging cluster images: Put all ESXi hosts in a group with a single mouse click without putting them in maintenance mode. Updating ESXi hosts on VMware vSphere will be faster and you can minimize the management window.
Parallel debugging of ESXi hosts: This new concept allows for quick patching of the cluster, which is convenient when updating a large cluster with several hosts. You can configure the number of hosts to configure (maximum 10). This new approach is more efficient because now you only need to update one host at a time and put that host into maintenance mode before patching.
Deprecation VMware vSphere Update Manager: You can still use this tool in version 8, but it will be removed in future versions of vSphere.
vSphere with Tanzu in vSphere 8
Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.0 with workloads is the perfect vSphere 8 update for container managers and DevOps. Workload Availability Zones allow you to deploy Kubernetes clusters between VMware vSphere clusters. Kubernetes capabilities include multiple availability zones. This feature can improve the resilience of cloud-native applications and modern workloads. Package management and cluster lifecycle are simplified.
Running multiple Kubernetes clusters is simpler. You can manage groups from one place. Creating clusters is simplified thanks to a new Cluster API feature called ClusterClass. The open-source API integration can be used for automation and development.
Also Read: Proxmox VE 8.0 Released with Enhanced Features
VMware vSAN 8
VMware vSAN 8 supports modern TLC storage devices (solid state drives using three-tier cells) for high performance.
- Improved data compression mechanism. VMware vSAN compression removes redundant data from file blocks. First, vSAN uses deduplication, then compression is used when moving data from the cache to capacity.
- The new storage pool concept increases availability. The VSAN 8 pool concept allows for smaller fault domains.
- Faster resync time. Resync vSAN remaining objects and distribution between ESXi hosts that are members of the vSAN cluster.
- Native snapshots are available
DRS and vMotion Improvements
Distributed Resource Planning (DRS) in VMware vSphere 8.0 can better understand VM memory workloads to make migration decisions. As a result, deployment and migration of VMs do not affect performance.
Green metrics are introduced to monitor energy consumption to improve energy conservation. You can view the graph in the vSphere web interface and browser. Green metrics include:
- Power.Capacity.UsageVm
- Power.Capacity.UsageIdle
- Power.Capacity.UsageSystem
Creating migration-aware applications
In the current version of vSphere, the performance of some applications may suffer when migrating VMs using VoIP (Voice over IP) phone applications due to latency sensitivity. You can now write mobile applications to run on virtual machines in vSphere 8. Once the VM migration has started and you can use the option to delay but cancel the VM migration for a configurable amount of time. migration You can also allow built-in applications to shut down their services after a VM migration notification.
VMware vMotion in vSphere 8 supports migration of VMs running on ESXi hosts that support Intel Scalable I/O Virtualization (SIOV).
Security and Compliance
VMware vSphere 8.0 includes several new security features:
SSH times out: You can SSH into the ESXi host at any time. After this period (timeout), SSH access is automatically closed. This feature helps avoid accidental SSH logins when someone forgets to close them after completing a task via SSH.
TPM provisioning policy: This feature enables the automatic replacement of vTPM (Trusted Platform Module) devices when cloning a VM. The goal is to improve security and avoid risks associated with copying TPM secrets.
When configuring VM cloning, you have two options: copy or replace. Copying virtual machines with the same TPM can cause security issues because the same secret is used in multiple VMs. This new vSphere 8 feature allows you to automatically avoid this problem by selecting the replacement option.
TLS 1.2: It is currently the least supported version. You can use higher versions, but legacy TLS versions are not supported.
Conclusion
VMware vSphere 8 offers a set of improvements and new features that help improve performance and simplify and speed up management. The VMware 8 download link should be available on the VMware website after release. Follow official announcements and updates.
Regardless of your version of VMware vSphere, it is a best practice to create operational backups of your agentless VMs based on a carefully designed backup strategy. NAKIVO offers backup and recovery solutions designed specifically for today’s VMware environments.
Also Read: Introducing vSAN Max: Revolutionizing VMware’s Storage Solution
