Discover the essential security upgrades in VMware vSphere8. Our detailed guide covers everything you need to know to protect your virtual environment from cyber threats.

VMware introduced a number of enhancements in vSphere 8.0, including updates for vMotion. Most notably, the speed has been improved for both hot and cold migrations. However, VMware claims that cold migration is now x3 times faster than it was before. This is a positive development since previously, migration would take up too many hours.

Finally, you won’t have to use Fling software to use the Advanced VMware Cross vCenter vMotion capability (XVM). The feature has been introduced as part of vSphere in the recent vCenter Server 7 U1c update. Now, you can bulk-migrate VMs between vCenter Server instances without both of them being part of the same SSO.

It’s wrong to think that nothing can hijack your data while you migrate it between your hosts across hybrid environments and public clouds. One may never be too sure in securing sensitive traffic at network endpoints is necessary at all times. That’s why you shouldn’t overlook encrypted vMotion and use its great capabilities that are already there, in vSphere 7.

VMware introduced quite a good chunk of innovations this time: performance has been improved dramatically, memory pre-copy technology completely re-architected. But the true novelty lies in new Enhanced vMotion Capabilities (EVC) for GPU, making it a real powerhouse for intense workloads (graphic software, ML/DL-workloads, etc.)

Not every company owns a sophisticated infrastructure packed with shared storage, virtual SANs, NVMe, etc. Migrating systems, especially VMs, in an average IT environment could create workload disruptions because you’d have to stall other processes. Finally, however, those days are over: vMotion can migrate your VMs while keeping all systems active and operational.

VMware vSphere 6.5 is the latest version of the enterprise server virtual platform from VMware, but the new beta it’s already there for testers. Actually the next version it’s (in the beta). If you are building a new infrastructure from scratch the latest stable version is probably the best choices (for most cases); but what about if you have an old environment and you plan to upgrade it?

It is quite surprising how many companies migrate virtual workload nowadays. There could be different reasons – expiring contract with the service provider, move to the new office, consolidation of resources to minimize Capex and Opex, but in every case, companies need efficient and flexible V2V migration solution. Very often people think of migration in terms of moving data from one place to another. However, migration is much more than that. For instance, you would probably want VMs to keep the same IP addresses after the migration. Which means you need to consider stretching VLANs between the source and target locations in case you cannot migrate all VMs in particular subnet in one go. You must plan a network cutover too.

As many admins of virtual infrastructures know, for the first time ever, VMware vSphere 6.5 received the long awaited encryption feature of both virtual disks content and vMotion hot migrations. The VMs encryption works based on AES-NI algorithm, and the key management is carried out based on KMIP 1.1 standard. When I/O operation comes to the disk of the virtual machine, it is immediately encrypted on-the-fly, which provides complete security against data security attack.