VM /ETC

The only thing better than getting an advanced copy of VMware’s soon to be released VI3.5 is somebody else’s report and screenshots. You won’t be disappointed reading What’s new in ESX 3.5 & VC 2.5? (part 2) « Virtual Gabrie’s Weblog. Be sure to read all 4 posts in the series.

The following are some pasted parts of the report:

The Getting Started Wizard

“Next thing you’ll immediately notice is the “Getting Started Wizard”. On quite a number of levels, you can find these wizards like Hosts & Clusters view, Datacenter, Host, VM, Resource Pools and Clusters. The wizard helps you with the most common task to get you familiar with VC 2.5 as soon as possible.”

Changes in Performance Monitoring

“It is now easier to switch from cpu to memory or other standard graphs. In the upper right corner, there is a little pulldown menu for easy switching. It also includes a new graph “Management Agent” which shows the memory usage of the service console. Another new option is “System” which shows quite a number of cpu and memory countes for the host.”

New Configuration Tab Options

“First thing to notice are the extra options “Time configuration” and “Virtual Machine Swapfile location”. When selecting a ESX 3.0.2 host, the “Virtual Machine Swapfile location” option is not displayed, but the “Time configuration” option is. Its just limited in options now.”

NTP sync from the VI Client

“This option makes it much easier to configure NTP. When you click properties, you first have a window in which you can set the date and time manually, next you can enable or disable the NTP client. Through the “Options” button you can configure the general settings and NTP settings. The general settings let you set the startup behavior of the NTP daemon. You can also start, stop and restart the NTP daemon at this point. The NTP settings let you define the NTP servers you wish to use. Nice feature is that enabling or disabling the NTP client, also updates your security profile and opens or closes the NTP client port (123).”

New VM settings

“On the network properites, I see a new box to change the MAC Address for a VM. You can choose Automatic or Manual and when selecting Manual, you can change the MAC Address. Very nice, no more editting the VMX.”

“In the virtual disk properties, you can resize your VMDK ! That’s realy nice. You can only increase the size, not shrink it.”

“Virtual Machine settings: Options tab

On the “VMware Tools” item, I see an extra section “advanced”. Here you can check to “Check and upgrade Tools before each power on” and “Synchronize guest time with host”.”

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