This Post will explain you to understand the key differences between vSphere 5.1 and vSphere 5.5. vSphere 5.5 is introduced with lot of new and enhanced features along with increased configuration maximums. The below table helps you to compare the differences between vSphere 5.1 and vSphere 5.5 for various features and configuration maximums between the two versions of vSphere.
Features | vSphere 5.1 | vSphere 5.5 |
Physical CPUs per host | 160 | 320 |
Physical RAM per host | 2 TB | 4 TB |
NUMA nodes per host | 8 | 16 |
Maximum vCPUs per host | 2048 | 4096 |
VMDK Size | 2TB | 62 TB |
Max Size of Virtual RDM | 2TB | 62 TB |
VM Hardware Version | 9 | 10 |
40 GBps physical Adapter support | No | yes |
ESXi Free version RAM limit | 32 GB | unlimited |
ESXi Free version maximum vSMP | 8-way virtual SMP | 8-way virtual SMP |
16 GB fibre channel End-to-End support | Support to run these HBAs at 16Gb. However, there is no support for full, end-to-end 16Gb connectivity from host to array. | Yes |
APP HA | No | Yes |
vFlash Read Cache support | No | Yes |
VMware VSAN support | No | Yes |
Expanded v-GPU and G-GPU support | only NVIDIA | NVIDIA, AMD and Intel GPU |
vCenter Server Appliance With Embedded Database support upto | 5 Hosts and 50 Virtual Machines | 100 Hosts and 3000 Virtual Machines |
Microsoft Windows 2012 Cluster Support | No | Yes |
PDL (Permanent Device Loss) AutoRemove | No | Intoduced in vSphere 5.5 |
Graphics acceleration support for Linux Guest OS | No | Yes |
Hot-pluggable SSDPCIe devices | No | Yes |
Support for Reliable Memory Technology | No | Yes |
CPU C-state Enhancement | Host power management leveraged only the performance state (P-state), which kept the processor running at a lower frequency and voltage | Processor power state (C-state) also is used, providing additional power savings and increased Performance |
LSI SAS support for Oracle Solaris 11 OS | No | Yes |
vSphere Big Data Extensions | No | Yes |
SATA-based virtual device nodes via AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) support | No | Yes (Support upto 120 devices per VM) |
Improved LACP Support | one LACP group per distributed switch | Supports up to 64 |
Multiple point-in-time replicas | vSphere Replication kept only the most recent copy of a virtual machine | Version 5.5 can keep up to 24 historical snapshots |
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