VERSION COMPARISON

VMware vSphere®
Version Comparison
VMWARE vSPHERE® VERSION
KEY FEATURES/ CAPABILITIES
6.5 6.7 7 8

DEVOPS SERVICES
Application focused management  
VMware Tanzu® Kubernetes Grid™
Service for vSphere  
Requires NSX-T Requires NSX-T
vSphere Pod Service currently currently

Storage Service  
Network Service  
Container Registry Service  
VM Registry service  
 
Network Load Balancing NSX Advanced NSX Advanced
Load Balancer Load Balancer
Essentials included Essentials included

VM Service  
VM Service support for GPU  
GPU accelerated VMware Tanzu®
Kubernetes Grid™ cluster  
Cloud Consumption Interface 
Local Consumption Interface (LCI) 
Workload Availability Zones 
Simplified TKG cluster lifecycle management 
TKG cluster package management 
Independent TKG Service 
Customizable base OS images 
Authentication through Pinniped 
Supervisor support on vSAN stretched clusters 
VM Service: Expanded VM Class configuration 
VM Service: Backup and restore service 
Kubernetes clusters autoscaling 

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VMware vSphere® Version Comparison

KEY FEATURES/ CAPABILITIES 6.5 6.7 7 8

VM MOBILITY AND MANAGEMENT

vSphere vMotion®    

vSphere Storage vMotion®    

Content library    

Cross-vSwitch vMotion    

Cross-vCenter® vMotion1    

Long-distance vMotion    

Cross-cloud vMotion/ hot migration2    

Cross-vCenter mixed- version vMotion2    

Cross-cloud cold migration2    

Per-virtual machine (VM) enhanced vMotion compatibility   

vMotion for Multi-Instance GPUs (MIG)  

vMotion on Intel® Scalable I/O Virtualization devices (SIOV) 

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler™ (DRS) – for compute and memory    

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  
Initial workload placement for Multi-Instance GPUs (MIG)  
DRS support for vSphere Memory Monitoring and Remediation (vMMR) 
DRS automation for vGPU workloads 
Vendor Device Groups 

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VMware vSphere® Version Comparison

KEY FEATURES/ CAPABILITIES 6.5 6.7 7 8

AVAILABILITY

Fault tolerance 4 vCPU 8 vCPU 8 vCPU 8 vCPU

vSphere Replication™    

High availability (HA) VM component protection    

Orchestrated HA restart    

Proactive HA    

vCenter Server® HA1    

vSphere HA for PMEM workloads  

Workload Availability Zones 

STORAGE

vSphere Virtual Volumes™    

Storage policy-based management    

NFS 4.1 support    

Automated UNMAP    

Support for 4K native storage   

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VMware vSphere® Version Comparison

KEY FEATURES/ CAPABILITIES 6.5 6.7 7 8

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 (ADFS)  

Identity federation with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly

Azure AD), Okta, and PingFederate 

vSphere Native Key Provider  

Confidential containers with AMD SEV-ES  

Simplified NSX security setup from vSphere Client 3  

TLS 1.3 and Customizable Cipher Suites4 

vSAN security hardening and compliance 

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KEY FEATURES/ CAPABILITIES 6.5 6.7 7 8

ENHANCED PERFORMANCE AND APPLICATION SUPPORT

VMware Instant Clone    

NVIDIA vGPU    

vSphere Integrated OpenStack    

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   

Support for NVIDIA AI-Ready Enterprise Platform  

NVIDIA Multi-Instance GPU (MIG)  

vMotion for Multi-Instance GPUs (MIG)  

DirectPath I/O support for up to 32 devices

in Passthrough 

Increase the number of vGPUs from 4 to 8 per VM 

vSphere on DPUs (VMware vSphere® Distributed

Services Engine™) 

Support for NVIDIA NVSwitch and NVLink 

Heterogeneous vGPU profiles on the same GPU 

Dual DPU support with DSE 

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 VMware vSphere® Version Comparison

KEY FEATURES/ CAPABILITIES 6.5 6.7 7 8

ADMINISTRATION

Enhanced Linked Mode    

vCenter Server Hybrid Linked Mode5    

vCenter Server backup and restore6    

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 retention6   
vSphere Lifecycle Manager™  
vCenter Server update planner  
vCenter Server profiles  
Desired image seeding  
ESXi suspend-to-memory  
vSphere Lifecycle Manager enhancements
(pre-stage ESXi images) 
ESXi Live Patching 
Enhanced Image Customization 
Green Metrics 
Configuration Profiles™ 

1. 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+.
2. 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.
3. Requires NSX-T version 3.2 or later
4. For more information about the use of TLS 1.3 with FIPS 140-3 requirements consult the product documentation.
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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