VMware vSphere Version Comparison

	vSphere 4.0	vSphere 4.1	vSphere 5.0	vSphere 5.1	vSphere 5.5	vSphere 6.0	vSphere 6.5	vSphere 6.7	vSphere 7.0
Released	05/2009	07/2010	08/2011	09/2012	09/2013	03/2015	11/2016	04/2018	04/2020
Hypervisor	ESX & ESXi	ESX & ESXi	ESXi	ESXi	ESXi	ESXi	ESXi	ESXi	ESXi
CPUs per host	64	160	160	160	320	480	576	768	768
RAM per host	1 TB	1 TB	2 TB	2 TB	4 TB	12 TB	12 TB	16 TB	16 TB
vCPU per VM	8	8	32	64	64	128	128	128	128
vMEM per VM	255 GB	255 GB	1 TB	1 TB	1 TB	4 TB	6 TB	6 TB	6 TB
VMDK Size	2TB	2TB	2TB	2TB	62 TB	62 TB	62 TB	62 TB	62 TB
Cluster Size	32	32	32	32	32	64	64	64	64
FT Limit	1 vCPU 64 GB	1 vCPU 64 GB	1 vCPU 64 GB	1 vCPU 64 GB	1 vCPU 64 GB	4 vCPU 64 GB	4 vCPU 64 GB	8 vCPU 128 GB	8 vCPU 128 GB
VM Hardware Version	7	7	8	9	10	11	13	14+15	17
VMFS Version	3.33	3.46	5.54	5.58	5.60	5.61	5.81 (VMFS5) 6.81 (VMFS6)	5.81 (VMFS5) 6.82 (VMFS6)	5.81 (VMFS5) 6.82 (VMFS6)
New Features	- Distributed Switch - Update Manager - Fault tolerance - Host Profiles - Storage vMotion - Linked Mode - Enhanced vMotion - Compatibility - Distributed Power Management - Hot Add VM CPU/Memory - VMDirectPath - VMXNET3	- Boot from SAN - Scripted Installation - Storage I/O Control - DRS Host Affinity - Memory Compression - Array Integration - Network I/O Control	- Auto Deploy - Storage DRS - vSphere Storage Appliance - Profile driven storage - vSphere Web Client - vCenter Server Appliance - ESXi Firewall	- Single Sign-On - Enhanced vMotion - Sparse Virtual Disks - Single-root I/O Virtualization - vSphere Replication - vSphere Data Protection - vShield Endpoint	- vSphere Flash Read Cache - Virtual SAN - Reliable Memory Technology - vSphere Big Data Extensions - vCenter Single Sign-On 2.0 - vSphere App HA - 40GBps NIC Support	- Virtual Volumes - vMotion across vSwitches - Cross vCenter vMotion - Native Linked Mode - Platform Services Controller - Certificate Authority (VMCA) - Content Library	- vCenter Migration - vCenter Server High Availability - vCenter Backup and Restore - REST API - Virtual Machine Encryption - Encrypted vMotion - Audit Logging - Proactive HA - HA Orchestrated Restart - Automated UNMAP - vSphere Integrated Containers	- Single Reboot Upgrade - Instant Clone - ESXi Quick Boot - Persistent Memory Devices - vCenter Appliance Backup - 4k Native Storage - TPM 2.0 - vTPM 2.0	- Tanzu - Trust Authority - Lifecycle Manager - Improved DRS
Management	C# Client	C# Client	C# Client Web Client	C# Client Web Client	C# Client Web Client	C# Client Web Client	Web Client HTML5 Client	HTML5 Client Web Client	HTML5 Client
Authentication Management	-	-	-	Single Sign-On	Single Sign-On 5.5	Platform Services Controller	Platform Services Controller	Platform Services Controller	Platform Services Controller
Backup Strategy	VMware Data Recovery (VDR)			vSphere Data Protection (VDP)				N/A	N/A
vMotion Support	- Boundary: Datacenter - Shared Storage required - max. 5ms RTT		- Boundary: Datacenter - Shared Storage required - max. 10ms RTT	- Boundary: Datacenter - max. 10ms RTT	- Boundary: Datacenter - max. 10ms RTT	- vMotion across vCenters - vMotion across vSwitches - max. 100ms RTT		- max. 150ms RTT - Per-VM EVC - vGPU Migration	- Logic Optimizations - Reduced Stun Time - Reduced Performance Impact
Virtual SAN	-	-	-	-	VSAN 5.5	VSAN 6.0 VSAN 6.2	VSAN 6.5 VSAN 6.6	vSAN 6.7	vSAN 7.0
HA Agent	AAM Automatic Availability Manager		FDM Fault Domain Manager
VAAI Primitives	-	- Atomic Test & Set - Cloning Blocks - Zeroing File Blocks	- Atomic Test & Set - Cloning Blocks - Zeroing File Blocks - UNMAP - Quota Exceeded Behavior - TP LUN Reporting - NFS Full File Clone - NFS Space Reservation - NFS Extended Stat - NFS Space Reclaim - NFS Fast File Clone
vCenter Type	Windows	Windows	Windows Linux	Windows Linux	Windows Linux	Windows Linux	Windows Linux	Linux Windows	Linux
vCSA Scale (vPostgres)	-	-	5 Hosts 50 VMs	5 Hosts 50 VMs	100 Hosts 3000 VMs	1000 Hosts 10000 VMs	2000 Hosts 25000 VMs	2000 Hosts 35000 VMs	2500 Hosts 40000 VMs

Sai October 24, 2016 at 9:19 am

Thanks for the comparison

Vittal January 4, 2017 at 8:04 am

thanks for the info. Your contribution is much appreciated.

Webster January 19, 2017 at 1:44 am

How about adding this please.

Virtual NUMA topology is available to hardware version 8 virtual machines and is enabled by default when the number of virtual CPUs is greater than eight.