Today, VMware announces vSphere 6, the latest release of the industry-leading virtualization platform, and the first major release of the flagship product in more than three years (read the press release). vSphere 6 is packed with 650-plus new features and innovations that will empower users to virtualize applications with confidence by delivering increased scale and performance, breakthrough availability, storage efficiencies for virtual machines (VMs), and simplified management for the virtual data center. vSphere 6 is purpose-built for both scale-up and scale-out applications including newer cloud, mobile, social and big data applications. Following is a sample of the new features:

Scale and Performance

Configuration maximums are increased across the board with many areas experiencing 2X, 3X or even 4X scale improvements.

Superior 2D and 3D graphics for your VMs with NVIDIA GRID vGPU (read the press release).

Instant Clone technology lays the foundation to rapidly clone and provisions VMs up to 10x faster than what is possible today.

Breakthrough Industry-First Availability

vMotion enhancements that span the boundaries of virtual switches and vCenter Servers and over long distances with up to 100ms round trip time.

Fault Tolerance for larger virtual machines with support for up to 4-vCPUs.

Efficient Storage for Virtual Machines

vSphere Virtual Volumes will enable a broad range of external storage arrays to become VM-aware. Storage Policy-Based Management (SPBM) allows for common management across storage tiers and dynamic storage class of service automation. Together, they enable exact combinations of data services (such as snapshots and clones) to be instantiated more efficiently on a per-VM basis.

Simplified Management of the Virtual Data Center

vSphere Content Library provides a centralized repository that provides simple and effective management for content including VM templates, ISO images, and scripts. With Content Library, it is now possible to store and manage content from a central location and share through a publish/subscribe model.

Cross-vCenter Clone and Cross-vCenter Migration enables VMs to be copied and moved between hosts on different vCenter Servers in a single action.

New streamlined Web Client that is more responsive and more intuitive. Nearly 100 areas of improvements with some areas experiencing up to 5x performance gains.

vSphere 6 not only packs many new features but also increased quality and robustness. Its development life cycle was extended by six months to increase quality through additional testing and internal usage of the product. Additionally, through customer outreach and several beta programs which attracted more than 17,000 participants, VMware was able to gain the feedback necessary to better align the product to the customer needs.

Along with the release of vSphere 6, VMware also announces increased support for OpenStack clouds with the release of VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO). VIO has made vSphere not only compatible, but optimized for OpenStack through many core integrations. VMware Integrated OpenStack is an add-on package that enables IT organizations to rapidly deploy OpenStack on VMware tools and technologies. It provides best-of-breed components for deploying, managing and running OpenStack infrastructure.

vSphere 6 is offered as a point product as well as through suite offerings. vSphere with Operations Management 6 optimizes the performance, capacity and configuration health of vSphere 6. vCloud Suite 6 features deep integrations between vSphere 6 and VMware’s cloud management solutions to get the most out of your vSphere-based private cloud. There are no price changes to vSphere 6, vSphere with Operations Management 6 or vCloud Suite 6. VIO is offered free of charge with for new and existing customers running vSphere Enterprise Plus. All products mentioned are expected to be available in Q1 2015.

Learn more about vSphere 6 at the following: