VMware just released vSphere 5.5 Update 3 for vCenter Server and ESXi. Besides many resolved issues there are some new features/enhancements.
What’s new in ESXi 5.5 U3
(copy out of the Release Note):
- Log Rotation Enablement
- Certification of PVSCSI Adapter
- Support for Next Generation Processors
- ESXi Authentication for Active Directory
One issue I would like to address in particular, as I noticed it relatively often:
ESXi hosts with the virtual machines having e1000 or e1000e vNIC driver might fail with a purple Screen.
For those who still use e1000 NICs this will be a good message – the issue is resolved in this relase!
What’s new in vCenter Server 5.5 U3
(copy out of the Release Note):
- vCenter Server database support: vCenter Server now supports Oracle 12c R1 P2, SQL Server 2012 SP 2 and SQL Server 2008 R2 SP3 as external database
- Increased guest operating system support: vCenter Server now supports some new guest operating systems, eg: CentOS 7.0, Oracle Linux 7.0, Windows 10,…
Some resolved issues that might be of interest for you:
- Security issue: Update to the Network Time Protocol (NTP) package version ntp-4.2.4p8-1.29.32.1
- The ESXi host with larger number of virtual machines might take a long time to go into maintenance mode: issue resolved
- Unable to login to vSphere Web Client with error “The vSphere web client cannot connect to the vCenter Single Sign On server”: issue resolved
- Changed Block Tracking is disabled after resizing a virtual disk: according to the release note, this issue is resolved with vSphere 5.5 U3. As far as I noticed this issue was already resolved with Update 2.