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Content Owner: Roman Macek | ||||
Summary
Yes (vCenter Server Standard + enhanced Web Client), enhanced vCSA, SSO
Details
vCenter Server is the central management application for vSphere, it is available in the following editions:
- vCenter Server Essentials - Integrated management for vSphere Essentials Kits
- vCenter Server Foundation - Centralized management for up to three vSphere hosts
- vCenter Server Standard - Highly scalable management with rapid provisioning, monitoring, orchestration and control of all virtual machines in a vSphere environment
vCenter Standard also allows for multiple vCenter instances to be linked (linked mode for central management and alerting). vCenter Server Foundation and vCenter Server Essentials editions do not support Linked Mode.
Additional comments:
The initial vCenter Single Sign On (SSO) has been improved in 5.5:
- Simplified deployment (single installation model for customers of all sizes)
- Enhanced Microsoft Active Directory integration - The addition of native Active Directory support enables cross-domain authentication with one- and two-way trusts common in multi-domain environments.
- Architecture - Built from the ground up, this architecture removes the requirement of a database and now delivers a multi-master authentication solution with built-in replication and support for multiple tenants.
vSphere 5 introduced the capability to deploy vCenter Server as a Linux based appliance (rather than installing the individual components manually). This capability has been maintained with vSphere 5.5. and the scalability limitations have been improved in 5.5 (e.g. from 5 hosts and 50 vm to 100 hosts and 3000 virtual machines in 5.5).
We will list the limits separately as: vCSA in the matrix
vSphere 5 also introduced a web-based client that is targeted to be the primary method of management with version 5.1 (rather than the C# client app).
vSphere 5.5 further enhanced the feature set of the web client:
- full client support for Mac OS X
- Drag and drop (e.g. drag and drop vm on to hosts)
- new filters and dynamically updated object lists based on those filters
- new recent-items navigation aid
- vCenter Server Essentials - Integrated management for vSphere Essentials Kits
- vCenter Server Foundation - Centralized management for up to three vSphere hosts
- vCenter Server Standard - Highly scalable management with rapid provisioning, monitoring, orchestration and control of all virtual machines in a vSphere environment
vCenter Standard also allows for multiple vCenter instances to be linked (linked mode for central management and alerting). vCenter Server Foundation and vCenter Server Essentials editions do not support Linked Mode.
Additional comments:
The initial vCenter Single Sign On (SSO) has been improved in 5.5:
- Simplified deployment (single installation model for customers of all sizes)
- Enhanced Microsoft Active Directory integration - The addition of native Active Directory support enables cross-domain authentication with one- and two-way trusts common in multi-domain environments.
- Architecture - Built from the ground up, this architecture removes the requirement of a database and now delivers a multi-master authentication solution with built-in replication and support for multiple tenants.
vSphere 5 introduced the capability to deploy vCenter Server as a Linux based appliance (rather than installing the individual components manually). This capability has been maintained with vSphere 5.5. and the scalability limitations have been improved in 5.5 (e.g. from 5 hosts and 50 vm to 100 hosts and 3000 virtual machines in 5.5).
We will list the limits separately as: vCSA in the matrix
vSphere 5 also introduced a web-based client that is targeted to be the primary method of management with version 5.1 (rather than the C# client app).
vSphere 5.5 further enhanced the feature set of the web client:
- full client support for Mac OS X
- Drag and drop (e.g. drag and drop vm on to hosts)
- new filters and dynamically updated object lists based on those filters
- new recent-items navigation aid
