CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCING VSPHERE 5

For those of you with prior vSphere experience you might recall vSphere 4 being more of a network/management-centric release (Distributed Switches, 64-bit computing, VDR, etc.). vSphere 5 will likely be known as the storage-centric release because of all the improvements like policy-based VM storage, Storage DRS, a completely new Storage vMotion technique, and a rewritten HA solution that uses shared storage to communicate host availability. Much has changed, yet the product will still feel familiar.

And now for those of you just joining us, you may be asking, “What is vSphere anyway?” Well, would you believe that it’s really just a marketing term? vSphere encompasses a lot of products and technologies, but what do you think of when you hear the word vSphere? If you said virtualization, cloud computing, ESXi server, or vCenter, you’d be right on track. And, at the risk of sounding like we’ve been bribed to drive the company line (unfortunately for us, we weren’t), vSphere 5 is all of these things and more.