VMware vSphere 5.5 features

VMware vSphere 5.5 was released on 22nd of September 2013. Below is a summary of the new features in 5.5 followed by a link to the PDF

vSphere 5.5 New Features

• vSphere ESXi Hypervisor Enhancements
–Hot-Pluggable SSD PCI Express (PCIe) Devices
–Support for Reliable Memory Technology
–Enhancements for CPU C-States
• Virtual Machine Enhancements
–Virtual Machine Compatibility with VMware ESXi™ 5.5
–Expanded vGPU Support
–Graphic Acceleration for Linux Guests
• VMware vCenter Server Enhancements
–VMware® vCenter™ Single Sign-On
–VMware vSphere Web Client
–VMware vCenter Server Appliance™
–vSphere App HA
–vSphere HA and VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler™ (vSphere DRS)
• Virtual Machine–Virtual Machine Affinity Rules Enhancements
–vSphere Big Data Extensions
• vSphere Storage Enhancements
–Support for 62TB VMDK
–MSCS Updates
–vSphere 5.1 Feature Updates
–16GB E2E support
–PDL AutoRemove
–vSphere Replication Interoperability
–vSphere Replication Multi-Point-in-Time Snapshot Retention
–vSphere Flash Read Cache
• vSphere Networking Enhancements
–Link Aggregation Control Protocol Enhancements
–Traffic Filtering
–Quality of Service Tagging
–SR-IOV Enhancements
–Enhanced Host-Level Packet Capture
–40GB NIC support

Installers i have downloaded
VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.5.0-1331820.x86_64
VMware-VIMSetup-all-5.5.0-1312299
VMware-viclient-all-5.5.0-1281650
VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-5.5.0.5100-1312297_OVF10



Reference: What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.5 Platform

Home Lab - VMware ESXi 5.5 Setup

Introduction

My first target is to setup VMware VDI for testing.My second target is to backup and restore baremetal.My third target is to destroy the above build and setup Citrix for testing.
PS: i will attach some photos if i have time, All this setup are done at night after my kids are asleep.

My Homelab Desktop Setup

i5-4670 3.4ghz Gen4 haswell processor

Asus H87M-E Motherboard

TP-LINK TG-3468 10/100/1000 PCI-e Network Card

1tb barracada seagate hdd

16gb ddr3 memory

cooler master 525 extreme 2 PSU

16gb USB stick

Requirements:

VMware vSphere 5.5 installer 

CPU and motherboard that support VT-d

Valid vmware account to download

Windows 2008 / 2012 server license

Estimated S$880 on costing bought from simlim square.

Part 1 - Hardware setup

1) Download VMware ESXi 5.5

2) Inject TP-Link and Realtek 8111g drivers into ESXi 5.5 iso

3) Make bootable USB from the iso.

4) performance tune your UEFI and make or set your boot priorities.

5) Boot from USB and install your ESXi 5.5

Part 2 - VMware / Software setup 

to be continue

Credits from the following link

http://www.v-front.de/2013/