VM /ETC

It was speculated that it might not happen until next week (Monday 11/23), but VMware engineer Dave Lawrence’s post Release: ESX 4.0 Update 1 on his VMGuy Blog confirms that ESX 4.0 U1 is now available for download. The most notable changes in this update include full support for VMware View 4 (expected to be available for download on 11/23), full support for Windows 7 and 2008 R2 in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavors, and an update to the vSphere Client that fixes the problem when installing on Windows 7 desktops – eliminating the need for the workaround VI admins have had to configure until now.

Go here for the full Release Notes that explain other new changes such as enhanced MSCS support, enhanced paravirtualized SCSI support, improved Distributed Switch performance, increased vCPU core limits, Intel Xeon 3400 CPU support, and several resolved issues.

VMware has also released vCenter 4 U1 tonight with matching support for View 4 along with Windows 7 and 2008 R2. The Release Notes indicate a few other goodies can be found in the vCenter update:

• Pre-Upgrade Checker Tool — A standalone pre-upgrade checker tool is now available as part of the vCenter Server installation media that proactively checks ESX hosts for any potential issues that you might encounter while upgrading vCenter agents on these hosts as part of the vCenter Server upgrade process. You can run this tool independently prior to upgrading an existing vCenter Server instance. The tool can help identify any configuration, networking, disk space or other ESX host-related issues that could prevent ESX hosts from being managed by vCenter Server after a successful vCenter Server upgrade.
• HA Cluster Configuration Maximum — HA clusters can now support 160 virtual machines per host in HA Cluster of 8 hosts or less. The maximum number of virtual machines per host in cluster sizes of 9 hosts and above is still 40, allowing a maximum of 1280 Virtual Machines per HA cluster.

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