VMware vSphere Version Comparison – Download
| Component | vSphere 4.0 | vSphere 4.1 | vSphere 5.0 | vSphere 5.1 | vSphere 5.5 | vSphere 6.0 | vSphere 6.5 |
| Hypervisor | ESX & ESXi | ESX & ESXi | ESXi | ESXi | ESXi | ESXi | ESXi |
| CPUs per host | 64 | 160 | 160 | 160 | 320 | 480 | 576 |
| RAM per host | 1 TB | 1 TB | 2 TB | 2 TB | 4 TB | 12 TB | 12 TB |
| vCPU per VM | 8 | 8 | 32 | 64 | 64 | 128 | 128 |
| vMEM per VM | 255 GB | 255 GB | 1 TB | 1 TB | 1 TB | 4 TB | 6 TB |
| VMDK Size | 2TB | 2TB | 2TB | 2TB | 62 TB | 62 TB | 62 TB |
| Cluster Size | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 64 | 64 |
| FT Max vCPU | 1 vCPU | 1 vCPU | 1 vCPU | 1 vCPU | 1 vCPU | 4 vCPU | 4 vCPU |
| VM Hardware Version | 7 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 13 |
| VMFS Version | 3.33 | 3.46 | 5.54 | 5.58 | 5.6 | 5.61 | 6.81 |
| New Features | – Distributed Switch | – Boot from SAN | – Auto Deploy | – Single Sign-On | – vSphere Flash Read Cache | – Virtual Volumes | – vCenter Migration |
| – Update Manager | – Scripted Installation | – Storage DRS | – Enhanced vMotion | – Virtual SAN | – vMotion across vSwitches | – vCenter Server High Availability | |
| – Fault tolerance | – Storage I/O Control | – vSphere Storage Appliance | – Sparse Virtual Disks | – Reliable Memory Technology | – Cross vCenter vMotion | – vCenter Backup and Restore | |
| – Host Profiles | – DRS Host Affinity | – Profile driven storage | – Single-root I/O Virtualization | – vSphere Big Data Extensions | – Native Linked Mode | – REST API | |
| – Storage vMotion | – Memory Compression | – vSphere Web Client | – vSphere Replication | – vCenter Single Sign-On 2.0 | – Platform Services Controller | – Virtual Machine Encryption | |
| – Linked Mode | – Array Integration | – vCenter Server Appliance | – vSphere Data Protection | – vSphere App HA | – Certificate Authority (VMCA) | – Encrypted vMotion | |
| – Enhanced vMotion – Compatibility | – Network I/O Control | – ESXi Firewall | – vShield Endpoint | – 40GBps NIC Support | – Content Library | – Audit Logging | |
| – Distributed Power Management | – Proactive HA | ||||||
| – Hot Add VM CPU/Memory | – HA Orchestrated Restart | ||||||
| – VMDirectPath | – Automated UNMAP | ||||||
| – VMXNET3 | – vSphere Integrated Containers | ||||||
| Management | C# Client | C# Client | C# Client | C# Client | C# Client | C# Client | Web Client |
| Web Client | Web Client | Web Client | Web Client | HTML5 Client | |||
| Authentication Management | – | – | – | Single Sign-On | Single Sign-On 5.5 | Platform Services Controller | Platform Services Controller |
| Backup Strategy | VMware Data Recovery (VDR) | vSphere Data Protection (VDP) | |||||
| vMotion Support | – Boundary: Datacenter | – Boundary: Datacenter | – Boundary: Datacenter | – Boundary: Datacenter | – vMotion across vCenters | ||
| – Shared Storage required | – Shared Storage required | – max. 10ms RTT | – max. 10ms RTT | – vMotion across vSwitches | |||
| – max. 5ms RTT | – max. 10ms RTT | – max. 100ms RTT | |||||
| Virtual SAN | – | – | – | – | VSAN 5.5 | VSAN 6.0 | VSAN 6.5 |
| VSAN 6.2 | |||||||
| HA Agent | AAM | FDM | |||||
| Automatic Availability Manager | Fault Domain Manager | ||||||
| VAAI Primitives | – | – Atomic Test & Set | – Atomic Test & Set | ||||
| – Cloning Blocks | – Cloning Blocks | ||||||
| – Zeroing File Blocks | – Zeroing File Blocks | ||||||
| – UNMAP | |||||||
| – Quota Exceeded Behavior | |||||||
| – TP LUN Reporting | |||||||
| – NFS Full File Clone | |||||||
| – NFS Space Reservation | |||||||
| – NFS Extended Stat | |||||||
| – NFS Space Reclaim | |||||||
| – NFS Fast File Clone | |||||||
| vCenter Type | Windows | Windows | Windows | Windows | Windows | Windows | Windows |
| Linux (vCSA) | Linux (vCSA) | Linux (vCSA) | Linux (vCSA) | Linux (vCSA) | |||
| vCSA Scale (vPostgres) | – | – | 5 Hosts | 5 Hosts | 100 Hosts | 1000 Hosts | 2000 Hosts |
| 50 VMs | 50 VMs | 3000 VMs | 10000 VMs | 25000 VMs | |||
