VMware vSphere 5.1 brings many new capabilities that extend the benefits of vSphere 5.0, including a number of new, storage-related features. Many of these enable VMware flagship products such as VMware vCloud Director and VMware View. vSphere 5.1 storage features and enhancements also bring additional scalability, performance and troubleshooting capabilities. This paper focuses on the storage-specific features and enhancements that are available in vSphere 5.1.
The following topics will be discussed in this paper:
- VMware vSphere VMFS-5 file-sharing enhancements
- Space-efficient sparse virtual disks
- All paths down (APD) condition–handling enhancements
- Storage protocol supportability improvements
- VMware vSphere Storage APIs – Array Integration (VAAI)
- Boot from software Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
- I/O device management (IODM)
- Solid-state disk (SSD) monitoring
- VMware vSphere Storage I/O Control enhancements
- VMware vSphere Storage DRS enhancements
- VMware vSphere Storage vMotion enhancements
This will provide a technical overview of new capabilities and enhancements regarding each of these new storage features.
Technical White Paper - What’s New in VMware vSphere Storage.pdf
