FEATURE COMPARISON

VMware vSphere® Feature Comparison

VMWARE vSPHERE® VERSION

KEY FEATURES/ CAPABILITIES
6.5 6.7 71

VMWARE vSPHERE® 7 WITH VMWARE TANZU™

2

(Requires Tanzu Basic edition and vSphere 7 Update 1 release)

Application focused management

•

VMware Tanzu™ Kubernetes Grid™ Service for vSphere

vSphere Pod Service Requires VMware NSX-T

Storage Service •

Network Service •

Registry Service Requires VMware NSX-T

Load Balancing Use VMware NSX-T or

our partner HAProxy

VERSION COMPARISON | 1
VMware vSphere Feature Comparison

KEY FEATURES/ CAPABILITIES 6.5 6.7 71

VM MOBILITY AND MANAGEMENT

vSphere vMotion® • • •

vSphere Storage vMotion® • • •

Content library • • •

Cross-vSwitch vMotion • • •

Cross-vCenter® vMotion3 • • •

Long-distance vMotion • • •

Cross-cloud vMotion/ hot migration4 • • •

Cross-vCenter mixed- version vMotion4 • • •

Cross-cloud cold migration4 • • •

Per-virtual machine (VM) enhanced vMotion • •

compatibility

FEATURE COMPARISON | 2
VMware vSphere Feature Comparison

KEY FEATURES/ CAPABILITIES 6.5 6.7 71

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler™ (DRS) –

for compute and memory • • •

vSphere Enhanced DRS •

vSphere Storage DRS™ • • •

vSphere Storage I/O Control

• • •

vSphere Network I/O Control

• • •

Network-aware DRS • •

Assignable hardware support for vGPU and vSphere

DirectPath I/O™ initial placement •

AVAILABILITY

Fault tolerance 4 vCPU 8 vCPU 8 vCPU

vSphere Replication™ • • •

High availability (HA) VM component protection • • •

Orchestrated HA restart • • •

Proactive HA • • •

vCenter Server® HA3 • • •

STORAGE

vSphere Virtual Volumes™

• • •

Storage policy-based management

• • •

NFS 4.1 support • • •

Automated UNMAP • • •

Support for 4K native storage

• •

FEATURE COMPARISON | 3
VMware vSphere Feature Comparison

KEY FEATURES/ CAPABILITIES 6.5 6.7 71

SECURITY

Multifactor authentication • • •

vSphere security hardening and compliance • • •

VM encryption • • •

Secure boot • • •

Audit quality logging • • •

Cross-vCenter encrypted vMotion • •

Support for TPM 2.0 • •

Virtual TPM 2.0 • •

Support for Microsoft virtualization-based security

(VBS), including Credential Guard • •

FIPS 140-2 validated • •

vSphere Trust Authority™ •

Identity federation with Active Directory Federation

Services •

FEATURE COMPARISON | 4
VMware vSphere Feature Comparison

KEY FEATURES/ CAPABILITIES 6.5 6.7 71

ENHANCED APPLICATION SUPPORT

VMware Instant Clone • • •

NVIDIA vGPU • • •

vSphere Integrated OpenStack • • •

vSphere Integrated Containers™ • • •

vMotion support for NVIDIA vGPU • •

vSphere Persistent Memory™ • •

Support for memory mapping for 1GB page sizes • •

Support for RoCE v2 • •

iSCSI extension for RDMA (iSER) • •

Support for RDMA InfiniBand • •

vSphere Bitfusion (Requires add-on)4 (Requires add-on)4

FEATURE COMPARISON | 5
VMware vSphere Feature Comparison

KEY FEATURES/ CAPABILITIES 6.5 6.7 71

ADMINISTRATION

vCenter Server Appliance™

• • •

Enhanced Linked Mode • • •

Certificate management • • •

Migration to vCenter Server Appliance

• • •

vCenter Server Hybrid Linked Mode5

• • •

vCenter Server backup and restore6

• • •

HTML5-based vSphere Client

• • •

REST-based APIs for vCenter Server management

• • •

Enhanced Linked Mode for vCenter Server Appliance

with Embedded Platform Services Controller™
•5 • •

Single reboot upgrades • •

vSphere Quick Boot™ • •

vCenter Server Appliance backup with built-in scheduler

and retention5 • •

vSphere Lifecycle Manager™

•

vCenter Server update planner

•

vCenter Server profiles •

vSphere Ideas

FEATURE COMPARISON | 6
VMware vSphere Feature Comparison

KEY SCALE METRICS: MAXIMUMS 6.5 6.7 71

Host per cluster 96

64 64
(Requires vSphere 7U1)

VMs per cluster 8,000 8,000 8,000

Hosts per VMware vCenter Server

2,000 2,000 2,500

Powered-on VMs per vCenter Server 25K 25K 30K

Hosts for 15 linked vCenter Servers 5K 5K 15K

CPUs per host 576 768 768

RAM per host 24TB

12TB 16TB
(Requires vSphere 7U1)

VMs per host 1,024 1,024 1,024

vCPUs per VM 256 768

128
(Requires vSphere 6.7U2) (Requires vSphere 7U1)

vRAM per VM 24TB

6TB 6TB
(Requires vSphere 7U1)

Non-volatile memory per host 1TB 1TB

Non-volatile memory per VM 1TB 1TB

Maximum vCenter Server request latency 200ms 250ms

1 The End of General Support for vSphere 6.0 was March 12, 2020 per KB66977. To maintain your full level of support and subscription services,
VMware recommends upgrading to the newly released vSphere 7 Update 1 version.
2 vSphere with Tanzu is available through the Tanzu Basic edition. Pre-requirements for ‘vSphere with Tanzu’ capabilities are that customers already have
the vSphere Enterprise plus edition, and that they have upgraded to vSphere 7 Update 1.
3 Compatible with vSphere 6.0, U1, U2 and U3 for vMotion between same versions. Backwards compatible with vSphere 6.0 U3+ and vSphere 6.5 U1+.
4 vSphere Bitfusion is available through a new add-on for all Enterprise plus customers. Visit the vSphere pricing and packaging whitepaper for more
details about the add-on for vSphere Bitfusion.
5 Backwards compatible with vSphere 6.0 U3+ on-premises and with vSphere 6.5 on premises. Compatible with vSphere 6.5 U2+ on-premises.
6 For vCenter Server Appliance only.

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