I am getting lot of request from email to post the difference between the vSphere 4.0 and vSphere 5.0. Here the post for the requests and I believe this could be the definite questions in interviews and this post helps you to just quickly review the difference between the features of this 2 vSphere Releases.
If you are looking for Difference between ESX 3.5 and ESX 4.0. Please refer my Blogpost “Difference between ESX 3.5 and ESX 4.0”
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Features
|
vSphere 4.1
|
vSphere 5.0
|
Hypervisor
|
ESX & ESXi
|
Only ESXi
|
VMA
|
Yes VMA 4.1
|
Yes VMA 5
|
HA Agent
|
AAM
Automatic Availability Manager |
FDM
Fault Domain Manager |
HA Host Approach
|
Primary & Secondary
|
Master & Slave
|
HA Failure Detection
|
Management N/W
|
Management N/W and Storage
communication |
HA Log File
|
/etc/opt/vmware/AAM
|
/etc/opt/vmware/FDM
|
DNS Dependent on DNS
|
Yes
|
NO
|
Host UEFI boot support
|
NO
|
boot systems from hard drives, CD/DVD drives, or USB media
|
Storage DRS
|
Not Available
|
Yes
|
VM Affinity & Anti-Affinity
|
Available
|
Available
|
VMDK Affinity & Anti-Affinity
|
Not Available
|
Available
|
Profile driven storage
|
Not Available
|
Available
|
VMFS version
|
VMFS-3
|
VMFS-5
|
VSphere Storage Appliance
|
Not Available
|
Available
|
Iscsi Port Binding
|
Can be only done via Cli
using ESXCLI |
Configure dependent
hardware iSCSI and software iSCSI adapters along with the network configurations and port binding in a single dialog box using the vSphere Client. |
Storage I/O control for NFS
|
Fiber Channel
|
Fiber Channel & NFS
|
Storage Vmotion Snapshot support
|
VM with Snapshot cannot be migrated using Storage vMotion
|
VM with Snapshot can be migrated using Storage vMotion
|
Swap to SSD
|
NO
|
Yes
|
Network I/O control
|
Yes
|
Yes with enhancement
|
ESXi firewall
|
Not Available
|
Yes
|
vCenter Linux Support
|
Not Available
|
vCenter Virtual Appliance
|
vSphere Full Client
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
vSphere Web Client
|
Yes
|
yes with lot of improvements
|
VM Hardware Version
|
7
|
8
|
Virtual CPU per VM
|
8 vCpu
|
32 vCpu
|
Virtual Machine RAM
|
255 GB
|
1 TB of vRAM
|
VM Swapfile size
|
255 GB
|
1 TB
|
Support for Client connected USB
|
Not Available
|
Yes
|
Non Hardware Accelerated
3D grpahics support |
Not Available
|
Yes
|
UEFI Virtual BIOS
|
Not Available
|
Yes
|
VMware Tools Version
|
4.1
|
5
|
Mutlicore vCpu
|
Not Available
|
Yes configure at VM setting
|
MAC OS Guest Support
|
Not Available
|
Apple Mac OS X Server 10.6
|
Smart card reader support for VM
|
Not Available
|
Yes
|
Auto Deploy
|
Not Available
|
Yes
|
Image Builder
|
Not Available
|
Yes
|
VM’s per host
|
320
|
512
|
Max Logical Cpu per Host
|
160
|
160
|
RAM per Host
|
1 TB
|
2 TB
|
MAX RAM for Service Console
|
800 MB
|
Not Applicable (NO SC)
|
LUNS per Server
|
256
|
256
|
Metro Vmotion
|
Round-trip latencies of up to
5 milliseconds. |
Round-trip latencies of up to
10 milliseconds. This provides better performance over long latency networks |
Storage Vmotion
|
Moving VM Files using moving to using dirty block tracking
|
Moving VM Files using I/O
mirroring with better enhancements |
Virtual Distributed Switch
|
Yes
|
Yes with more enhancements
like deeper view into virtual machine traffic through Netflow and enhances monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities through SPAN and LLDP |
USB 3.0 Support
|
NO
|
Yes
|
Host Per vCenter
|
1000
|
1000
|
Powered on virtual machines
per vCenter Server |
10000
|
10000
|
Vmkernel
|
64-bit
|
64-bit
|
Service Console
|
64-bit
|
Not Applicable (NO SC)
|
Licensing
|
vSphere Essentials
vSphere Essentials Plus vSphere Standard vSphere Advanced vSphere Enterprise vSphere Enterprise Plus |
vSphere Essentials
vSphere Essentials Plus vSphere Standard vSphere Enterprise vSphere Enterprise Plus |