I am getting lot of request from email to post the difference between the vSphere 4.0 and vSphere 5.0. Here the post for the requests and I believe this could be the definite questions in interviews and this post helps you to just quickly review the difference between the features of this 2 vSphere Releases.
If you are looking for Difference between ESX 3.5 and ESX 4.0. Please refer my Blogpost "Difference between ESX 3.5 and ESX 4.0"
If you are looking for Difference between ESX 3.5 and ESX 4.0. Please refer my Blogpost "Difference between ESX 3.5 and ESX 4.0"
Features | vSphere 4.1 | vSphere 5.0 |
Hypervisor | ESX & ESXi | Only ESXi |
VMA | Yes VMA 4.1 | Yes VMA 5 |
HA Agent | AAM Automatic Availability Manager | FDM Fault Domain Manager |
HA Host Approach | Primary & Secondary | Master & Slave |
HA Failure Detection | Management N/W | Management N/W and Storage communication |
HA Log File | /etc/opt/vmware/AAM | /etc/opt/vmware/FDM |
DNS Dependent on DNS | Yes | NO |
Host UEFI boot support | NO | boot systems from hard drives, CD/DVD drives, or USB media |
Storage DRS | Not Available | Yes |
VM Affinity & Anti-Affinity | Available | Available |
VMDK Affinity & Anti-Affinity | Not Available | Available |
Profile driven storage | Not Available | Available |
VMFS version | VMFS-3 | VMFS-5 |
VSphere Storage Appliance | Not Available | Available |
Iscsi Port Binding | Can be only done via Cli using ESXCLI | Configure dependent hardware iSCSI and software iSCSI adapters along with the network configurations and port binding in a single dialog box using the vSphere Client. |
Storage I/O control for NFS | Fiber Channel | Fiber Channel & NFS |
Storage Vmotion Snapshot support | VM with Snapshot cannot be migrated using Storage vMotion | VM with Snapshot can be migrated using Storage vMotion |
Swap to SSD | NO | Yes |
Network I/O control | Yes | Yes with enhancement |
ESXi firewall | Not Available | Yes |
vCenter Linux Support | Not Available | vCenter Virtual Appliance |
vSphere Full Client | Yes | Yes |
vSphere Web Client | Yes | yes with lot of improvements |
VM Hardware Version | 7 | 8 |
Virtual CPU per VM | 8 vCpu | 32 vCpu |
Virtual Machine RAM | 255 GB | 1 TB of vRAM |
VM Swapfile size | 255 GB | 1 TB |
Support for Client connected USB | Not Available | Yes |
Non Hardware Accelerated 3D grpahics support | Not Available | Yes |
UEFI Virtual BIOS | Not Available | Yes |
VMware Tools Version | 4.1 | 5 |
Mutlicore vCpu | Not Available | Yes configure at VM setting |
MAC OS Guest Support | Not Available | Apple Mac OS X Server 10.6 |
Smart card reader support for VM | Not Available | Yes |
Auto Deploy | Not Available | Yes |
Image Builder | Not Available | Yes |
VM's per host | 320 | 512 |
Max Logical Cpu per Host | 160 | 160 |
RAM per Host | 1 TB | 2 TB |
MAX RAM for Service Console | 800 MB | Not Applicable (NO SC) |
LUNS per Server | 256 | 256 |
Metro Vmotion | Round-trip latencies of up to 5 milliseconds. | Round-trip latencies of up to 10 milliseconds. This provides better performance over long latency networks |
Storage Vmotion | Moving VM Files using moving to using dirty block tracking | Moving VM Files using I/O mirroring with better enhancements |
Virtual Distributed Switch | Yes | Yes with more enhancements like deeper view into virtual machine traffic through Netflow and enhances monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities through SPAN and LLDP |
USB 3.0 Support | NO | Yes |
Host Per vCenter | 1000 | 1000 |
Powered on virtual machines per vCenter Server | 10000 | 10000 |
Vmkernel | 64-bit | 64-bit |
Service Console | 64-bit | Not Applicable (NO SC) |
Licensing | vSphere Essentials vSphere Essentials Plus vSphere Standard vSphere Advanced vSphere Enterprise vSphere Enterprise Plus | vSphere Essentials vSphere Essentials Plus vSphere Standard vSphere Enterprise vSphere Enterprise Plus |