With the 2012 wave of products, which include vSphere 5.1, VMware Workstation 9 and VMware Fusion 5, VMware has introduced a new version of the virtual hardware that powers a virtual machine. This latest version of virtual hardware, dubbed hardware version 9, adds some features to increase scale and also improves the nested virtualization services that came in last year’s product wave.
Here are some of the changes in hardware version 9:
- Up to 64 vCPUs per VM. This is increased from 32 and makes possible the creation of ever larger workloads.
- 1 Tb of RAM in a single virtual machine.
- Support for Intel VT-x/EPT and AMD-V/RVI technologies.
- Ability to reclaim space from thinly provisioned disks.
These are just some of the improvements you’ll find in the latest version of VMware’s product line.