vSphere 6 Beta

[hdtvguy]

What I will say, to reinforce my vmware QA concerns is that 5.1 U1 seemed more reliable we have far more problem with 5.5 U1 than we did with 5.1U1. We add almost 100VMs every year. Just to put my scale in perspective, I have 53 hosts, 866 VMs, 9 clusters and 339 datastores.

[bajorgensen]

I can agree to that. QA from both HP and VMware has taken a dive over the last years.
Mainly on 5.1U2 and pretty happy about that.

It is a good think VMware is more open during the beta cycle,
lets hope vSphere 6 becomes a solid release.

[hdtvguy]

We are seriously considering an N-2 position where we will wait for 6.0 U2 before going to V6, We find even the U1 releases lately have enough issues still to warranty the extra wait. Same with HP. As much as I nee Flash Cache and true async replication we had major issue during the 3.1.3 upgrade I think I will wait for for MU2 on their releases as well.

[bajorgensen]

I've considered the same thing. The problem is dependencies,
both backwards and forwards.

We were forced to roll out 5.5 due to MSCS 2012 R2 certifications,
this brought with it 3PAR OS 3.1.3, EVA FW etc etc...

Due to dependencies from other services in the vCloud suite and others,
we've found out we cannot live to far behind the point releases.

It is a nightmare of dependency mappings in large envrionments,
and an endless cycle of upgrades, both that is just the way it has become.
The mantra of a stable release living 2 years in an enterprise environment is gone,
I'd like to move to a more "continous release" cycle with new baselines every 6 months and live with the consequences.

This is also partly due to VMware now baking in security fixes in regular patches,
and then retroactively update advisories pointing to earlier releases.

[mujzeptu]

Did anyone ever try the vmware vvols with 3par? What firmware version did you have to run? How did it go?

[bajorgensen]

VVOLS are in private beta and HP requires you to have a dedicated system.
I am hearing some rumors that it could be more available,
I'll post an update if I am allowed to share.