ESXi 5.5 free edition removes 32GB memory limit

VMware

There have been a ton of exciting announcements coming out of VMword 2013, one of which is vSphere 5.5 and all of it’s improvements and additions. Along that note, VMware has changed ESXi 5.5 free version to remove the physical RAM limit which was limited to only 32GB in version 5.1.

The new virtual hardware, version 10, we can now grow our home labs into more powerful VM’s as most all configuration maximums have been doubled:

  • 320 Physical CPU’s per ESXi host (compared to 160 in ESXi 5.1)
  • Support of 4TB of memory (compared to 2TB in 5.1)
  • 16 NUMA nodes (compared to 8 in 5.1)
  • 4096 maxium vCPU’s (compared to 2048 in 5.1)
  • 62 TB VMDK virtual disk support
  • 16 GB FibreChannel end-to-end Support
  • Increased VMFS Heap, 64TB open VMDK per host max

There is a 8 vCPU limit per VM on ESXi 5.5, though for home lab usage I don’t see many people having an issue with that limitation.

The changes to ESXi 5.5 is good news and certainly welcomed for those running an esxi home lab. In other good news for IT folks is the blog post by Chris Wahl – Signs of Life for the VMware VMTN Subscription Movement. I certainly hope VMware makes this happen!

Similar Posts

  • VMware vCenter 5.0 Update 1a released

    VMware
    0 Comments

    VMware vCenter 5.0 Update 1a has just been released and is the first major update since version 5.0.

    The main improvements being:

    • vCenter Server 5.0 Update 1a introduces support for the following vCenter Databases
      • Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition, Standard ONE Edition Release 2 [11.2.0.3] – 64 bit
      • Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition, Standard ONE Edition Release 2 [11.2.0.3] – 32 bit
    • vCenter Server Appliance Database Support: The DB2 express embedded database provided with the vCenter Server Appliance has been replaced with VMware vPostgres database. This decreases the appliance footprint and reduces the time to deploy vCenter Server further.

    Read More “VMware vCenter 5.0 Update 1a released”

  • Backup and Restore VMware VCSA 6.5

    VMware
    0 Comments

    With the release of vSphere 6.5, the VCSA has had a built-in and convenient way easily backup the configuration, inventory and even historical data right from the VAMI and directly into a TAR bundle. VMware has also made restoring the VCSA from a backup just as easy as well.

    Below are quick and dirty steps to backing up and restoring your VMware VCSA!

    Read More “Backup and Restore VMware VCSA 6.5”

  • How to fix VMware Converter error “FAILED: The VSS snapshots cannot be stored”

    VMware
    2 Comments

    While moving some VM’s from Hyper-V to VMware using VMware Converter a VM failed to convert with the error: FAILED: The VSS snapshots cannot be stored.

    FAILED: The VSS snapshots cannot be stored because there is not enough space on the source volumes or because the source machine does not have any NTFS volumes. Error code: 2147754783 (0x8004231F).

    Come to find out the System Reserved partition was full. Our soon to be retired Appassure backup application was nice enough to fill up the volume.

    Luckily Appassure is being replaced by Veeam and fixing the above VMware Converter error is an easy fix.

    Read More “How to fix VMware Converter error “FAILED: The VSS snapshots cannot be stored””

  • VMware Workstation 12 Pro Released

    VMware
    0 Comments

    VMware has just released a new version of Workstation in VMware Workstation 12 Pro. Workstation 12 Pro provides full support for Windows 10, including features such as Cortana and universal applications. As well as even larger virtual machines with up to 16 vCPU’s and 64GB of memory. Workstation 12 Pro even supports 4K displays and DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3.3

    You can even seamlessly drag and drop virtual machines between your PC and your internal cloud running vSphere, ESXi or another instance of Workstation. In addition, easily connect to vCloud Air and upload, run, and view virtual machines right from the Workstation 12 Pro interface.

    Read More “VMware Workstation 12 Pro Released”

  • How to install VMware vSphere Update Manager 5.5

    VMware
    2 Comments

    If you don’t already know, VMware Update Manager (aka, VUM) is a tool which allows you to easily automate patching and upgrading VMware hosts as well as virtual machine hardware and VMware tools. It’s a wonderful tool and makes upgrading and patching so much easier and allows you to quickly see how compliant/up-to-date your environment is with the built in pie graph.

    Recently we had some pretty serious array issues which corrupted the VUM database taking Update Manager down. Since we was going to have to rebuild Update Manager I opted to move from Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2012, in the steps below I’ll document step by step how to install VMware Update Manager 5.5 on Server 2012 and a separate database.

    Read More “How to install VMware vSphere Update Manager 5.5”

  • VMware Workstation 8.0.4 released

    VMware
    0 Comments

    VMware has just released it’s forth minor update for VMware Workstation 8, bringing it up to 8.0.4. The looks to contain mostly a few bug and security fixes.

    General Issues

    • Linux guests running the Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later could not be pinged from the host via an IPv6 address.
    • On rare occasions, Linux guests would suddenly fail to Autofit or enter Unity.
    • Unity mode would exit if the title bar of an application contained certain non UTF-8 encoded extended ASCII characters.
    • On Windows hosts, the VMware Workstation user interface sometimes became unresponsive when minimized from full-screen mode if the suggestion balloon was being displayed.
    • On Windows hosts, the user interface sometimes became unresponsive if the application was rendered on an extended display that was abruptly disconnected.

    Read More “VMware Workstation 8.0.4 released”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *