There are a few things to think about with regard to licensing  first, vSphere 4.1 now allows for DRS affinity so that VMs only move between certain hosts of a cluster.  I’m still waiting for a definite answer from my VMware friends but that should allow you to protect some VM’s and set their DRS Affinity to only the hosts that you own SRM CPUs for and still keep the full cluster for the unprotected VMs. Previously, VMware would recommend that you create a separate cluster for your “protected” VMs if they were a small subset of the whole.  Now with DRS Affinity, you can dictate that certain “protected” VMs only move between a subset of a cluster.  We’ll still have to wait and see the final ruling from VMware but I’m thinking that would work in the short-term for those in the per-CPU dilemma.

The second feature of the new licensing that I really like is the rolling average of VMs over the last twelve months.  What that translates to is that now I need to buy what my daily average of VMs protected would be over a 12 month period.  If I have certain points of the year where my VM count spikes, this average would be monitored by vCenter and alarm if I am going over my licensing limits.  However, I would only need the average number of protected VMs over the past year.  The system will continue to run after going over your limit but that’s definitely not something I would condone (Famous VMware SE saying: ethics don’t ship in the box people).

The per-vm licenses are sold in blocks of 25 and range from $1,250 to $11,250 depending on the product.  Per-vm licensing will be available for Chargeback, Appspeed, SRM, and, later this year, CapacityIQ.  You can find more information on VMware’s website here.

The last question I had was, “How do I know what my rolling average is for those licenses?”  The good news is that once you enter in a license key, the new license reporting manager in vSphere 4.1 will tell you what your rolling average is year-to-date.  Looks like someone was planning ahead.

The following enhancements have been made for this release of Data Recovery.

File Level Restore (FLR) is now available for use with Linux.
Each vCenter Server instance supports up to ten Data Recovery backup appliances.
The vSphere Client plug-in supports fast switching among Data Recovery backup appliances.
Miscellaneous vSphere Client Plug-In user interface enhancements including:
The means to name backup jobs during their creation.
Additional information about the current status of destination disks including the disk’s health and the degree of space savings provided by the deduplication store’s optimizations.
Information about the datastore from which virtual disks are backed up.

You can also see a nice little writeup from the developers and a little video showing the new stuff here.

This release of VMware vCenter Server 4.0 Update 2 offers the following improvements:

Guest Operating System Customization Improvements: vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:
Windows XP Professional SP2 (x64) serviced by Windows Server 2003 SP2
SLES 11 (x32 and x64)
SLES 10 SP3 (x32 and x64)
RHEL 5.5 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
RHEL 5.4 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
RHEL 4.8 Server Platform (x32 and 64)
Debian 5.0 (x32 and x64)
Debian 5.0 R1 (x32 and x64)
Debian 5.0 R2 (x32 and x64)

The following information provides highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware ESX:

Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors.
Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors.
Enablement of IOMMU Functionality for AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors without input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables IOMMU functionality for the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors.
Enhancement of the esxtop/resxtop utility— vSphere 4.0 Update 2 includes an enhancement of the performance monitoring utilities, esxtop and resxtop. The esxtop/resxtop utilities now provide visibility into the performance of NFS datastores in that they display the following statistics for NFS datastores: Reads/s, writes/s, MBreads/s, MBwrtn/s, cmds/s, GAVG/s(guest latency).
Additional Guest Operating System Support— ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2 adds support for Ubuntu 10.04. For a complete list of supported guest operating systems with this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

CapacityIQ 1.0.3 is a maintenance release that supports additional VMware High Availability (HA) settings.

CapacityIQ factors reserved capacity to meet VMware HA failover commitments. CapacityIQ uses the VMware HA settings to calculate CPU and memory capacity for clusters and datacenters. The VMware HA settings do not affect host and virtual machine capacity calculations.

CapacityIQ 1.0.2 uses the enabled status of VMware HA and number of host failures in the Admission Control Policy settings of the vSphere Client as factors for modeling and forecasting capacity. CapacityIQ 1.0.3 adds the percentage of cluster resources reserved as failover spare capacity and the dedicated failover host number as factors for capacity.

The following VMware HA settings are the factors that affect CapacityIQ calculations:

Enabled or disabled status of high availability.
CapacityIQ detects VMware HA settings to calculate CPU and memory capacity for clusters and datacenters. If you do not use a VMware HA cluster, CapacityIQ sums up the capacity of all hosts in the cluster.
Number of host failures that the cluster tolerates.
CapacityIQ detects the number of host failures that the cluster tolerates and excludes the hosts with the most CPU and memory capacity. For example, if a cluster has 10 hosts and you set the number of host failures to three, CapacityIQ detects which three out of the ten hosts have the most CPU and memory capacity and excludes those hosts in the calculation. The CapacityIQ calculations of VMware HA CPU capacity and VMware HA memory capacity occur separately and the hosts that CapacityIQ excludes might be different for the CPU and memory calculations.
Percentage of cluster resources reserved as failover spare capacity.
CapacityIQ sums up the capacity of all hosts and multiplies that value by
(1-<percentage_reserved_as_failover_spare_capacity>). For example, if a cluster with 20 hosts has a total of 100GHz, and 20 percent of hosts are set aside for failures, the calculation for the VMware HA CPU capacity of the cluster is 100 × (1-.2).
Dedicated failover host.
CapacityIQ excludes the capacity of a dedicated failover host and sums up the capacity of the rest of the hosts. For example, if a cluster has three hosts with 9GHz, 8GHz, and 6GHz, and the 9GHz host serves as a dedicated failover host, the calculation for the VMware HA CPU capacity of the cluster is 8GHz + 6 GHz.
This maintenance release does not include any additional enhancements beyond the support of VMware HA settings.

This release of VMware Workstation adds the following new features and support:

New Support for 32-Bit and 64-Bit Operating Systems
New Features in VMware Workstation
New Support for 32-Bit and 64-Bit Operating Systems

This release provides support for the following host and guest operating systems:

Operating System
Host and Guest Support

Ubuntu 8.04.4    Host and guest
Ubuntu 10.04    Host and guest
OpenSUSE 11.2    Host and guest
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5    Host and guest
Fedora 12    Guest
Debian 5.0.4    Guest
Mandriva 2009.1    Guest
New Features in VMware Workstation

OpenGL 2.1 support for Windows 7 and Windows Vista guests — Improves the ability to run graphics-based applications in virtual machines.
Improved Graphics Performance — Enhanced performance with better benchmarks, frame rates, and improved rendering on Windows 7 and Windows Vista guests allows you to run various graphics-based applications. In addition, major improvements in video playback enable you to play high-resolution videos in virtual machines.
Automatic Software Updates — Download and install VMware Tools and receive maintenance updates when available.
Direct Launch — Drag guest applications from the Unity start menu directly onto the host desktop. Double-click the shortcut to open the guest application. The shortcut remains on the desktop after you exit Unity and close VMware Workstation.
Autologon — Save your login credentials and bypass the login dialog box when you power on a Windows guest. Use this feature if you restart the guest frequently and want to avoid entering your login credentials. You can enable Autologon and use direct launch to open guest applications from the host.
OVF 1.1 Support — Import or export virtual machines and vApps to upload them to VMware vSphere or VMware vCloud. The VMware OVF Tool is a command-line utility bundled in the VMware Workstation installer. Use this tool along with VMware Workstation to convert VMware .vmx files to .ovf format or vice versa. VMware recommends that you use the OVF command-line utility. For more information, see the OVF Web site and OVF Tool User Guide.
Eight-Way SMP Support — Create and run virtual machines with a total of up to eight-processor cores.
2TB Virtual Disk Support — Maximum virtual disks and raw disks size increased from 950GB to 2TB.
Encryption Enhancements — VMware Workstation includes support for Intel’s Advanced Encryption Standard instruction set (AES-NI) to improve performance while encrypting and decrypting virtual machines and faster run-time access to encrypted virtual machines on new processors.
Memory Management — User interface enhancements have simplified the handling of increased virtual memory capacity.
User Experience Improvement Program — Help VMware improve future versions of the product by participating in the User Experience Improvement Program. Participation in the program is voluntary and you can opt out at any time. When you participate in the User Experience Improvement Program, your computer sends anonymous information to VMware, which may include product configuration; usage and performance data, virtual machine configuration; usage and performance data, and information about your host system specifications and configuration.

The User Experience Improvement Program does not collect any personal data, such as your name, address, telephone number, or email address that can be used to identify or contact you. No user identifiable data such as the product license key or MAC address are sent to VMware. VMware does not store your IP address with the data that is collected.

For more information about the User Experience Improvement Program, click the Learn More link during installation or from the VMware Workstation Preferences menu.

VMware Fusion 3.1 has a large number of new and improved features, including:

New Features

8-way SMP
2 TB Virtual Disks
OpenGL 2.1 for Vista
OpenGL 2.1 for Windows 7
Support for overlapping Unity windows in Exposé and Dock Exposé
USB “EasyConnect” to easily assign USB devices to virtual machine or Mac when connected
OVF Tool for Mac OS X now included as optional install with full download or CD install
OVF Tool 2: Import and export OVF packaged virtual machines and upload to vSphere with bundled OVF Tool
Drag a disk image or virtual disk to the installation media pane of the assistant
Add shortcut for opening a virtual machines configuration file in default text editor for VMware Fusion (Hold down option and right-click in Virtual Machine Library)
User Experience Improvement Program

Graphics Improvements

Aero is much faster on Windows Vista and Windows 7
Greatly improved scrolling speeds in Windows Vista and Windows 7 with latest Mac OS X release
Some games up to 10x faster than VMware Fusion 3.0 with VMware Fusion 3.1 and latest Mac OS X release
Improved performance and better compatibility for both DirectX 9 and OpenGL 3D applications

Boot Camp Improvements

Up to 5x disk performance in Boot Camp virtual machines
New option to minimize prompting for password (authentication dialogs) when using Boot Camp virtual machines
Handle Mac OS X disk changes better to avoid multiple references to Boot Camp partition in the Virtual Machine Library

PC Migration Improvements

Improvements to Migrate Your PC assistant, including better validation of names and better location prompt
Prompt user if Mac OS X guest account prevents guest access to shared folders instead of failing
Open new virtual machine on successful migration
Enhanced user interface on PC being migrated including:
New progress dialog on the PC being migrated as well as in VMware Fusion
Option to show converter logs and troubleshooting steps on PC if PC migration fails
Avoids port conflicts with Web server software installed on PC such as IIS, Tomcat, and Apache

New Guest Operating Systems Supported

Ubuntu 8.0.4.4: 32- and 64-bit
Ubuntu 10.04: 32- and 64-bit (currently in Beta)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 Service Pack 1: 32- and 64-bit
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 1: 32- and 64-bit
RHEL 5.4: 32- and 64-bit

You can download it using the link above or running the updater inside of Fusion itself.  Enjoy.

The 4.5 release adds the following features to improve usability, performance, and updates:

• Support for Windows Server 2008 R2, 32-bit Windows 7, and 64-bit Windows 7 operating systems.
• ThinApp version updates to incorporate the latest features or support enhancements without rebuilding packages. The relink.exe utility updates existing packages.
• Compression of MSI packages that uses the MSICompressionType parameter to improve the ThinApp SDK performance.
• Reduced memory consumption and page file usage to improve startup performance. The OptimizeFor parameter works with the CompressionType parameter to customize memory performance and startup time.
• Anonymous collection of statistics to expand the support for applications. You can use the Setup Capture wizard or the QualityReportingEnabled parameter to help VMware build support for applications and help you migrate more native applications to a virtual environment.
• Loading of DLL files as virtual DLL files without using API functions. The ForcedVirtualLoadPaths parameter loads external system DLL files that depend on DLL files inside the package.
• Product interface updates to improve usability and link to video and documentation information.
• German and Japanese versions of the ThinApp User’s Guide are available.

Localization of VMware View

The View Client and online help for View Client are now available in Japanese, French, German, and simplified Chinese. The View Manager Administration Guide, View Manager Release Notes, Getting Started with VMware View document, View Upgrade Guide, and View Architecture Planning Guide are also available in these languages.

VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 and ESX 3.5 Update 5 Support

View Manager 4.0.1 includes support for VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 and ESX 3.5 Update 5.

Enhancements to the PCoIP Display Protocol

PCoIP now supports the following features:

Virtual Printing, which allows end users to use local or network printers from a View desktop without requiring that additional print drivers be installed in the View desktop.
Single sign-on support for third party providers such as Sentillion and Imprivata.
View Client supports international keyboards when using PCoIP.
For PCoIP-related bug fixes, see the View Client Resolved Issues section.

Here’s the notes from the patch:

The VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.0 Update 1 Patch 1 adds fixes to issues with the Cisco VSM module. If you do not use this module, you will not need this patch. For details regarding the issues fixed, please see the patch release notes.

The release notes link was not working for me on the download page.

The update mostly includes guest operating system custimization enhancements.

Here’s the what’s new section from the release notes:

Guest Operating Systems Customization Improvements

Customization support for the following guest operating systems has been added in this release:
For more complete information about supported guests included in this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

Windows 7 Enterprise (32-bit and 64-bit)
Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit)
Windows 7 Professional (32-bit and 64-bit)
Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit and 64-bit)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition (64-bit)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (64-bit)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition (64-bit)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Web Server (64-bit)
Support for Firefox 3.x Browsers with VirtualCenter Web  Access

This release adds support for Firefox 3.x browsers with VirtualCenter Web Access. Firefox 3.x is not a supported browser for ESX Server 3.5 Update 5 Web Access with this release.

Looks like bug fixes and some new supported guest and host OSes.

Here’s the What’s New section from the Release Notes:

Workstation 7.0.1 is a maintenance release that resolves some known issues. This release of VMware Workstation adds the following new support:
New Support for 32-Bit and 64-Bit Operating Systems
This release provides support for the following host and guest operating systems:

Operating System  Host and Guest Support
Windows 2008 R2    Host and guest
Windows Vista SP2    Host and guest
Ubuntu 9.10    Host and guest
RHEL 5.4    Host and guest
CentOS 5.4    Guest
Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.4    Guest

Looks like bug fixes and more scalability.

Here’s the what’s new section from the release notes:

VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager (LCM) 1.1 release enhances the performance, robustness, and scalability of LCM and resolves a number of known issues.

The LCM 1.1 release runs on VMware vCenter Orchestrator 4.0.1. To run LCM 1.1, you must install the version of Orchestrator (4.0.1 Build 4502) that accompanies the LCM 1.1 download. See the vCenter Lifecycle Manager 1.1 Installation and Configuration Guide for installation instructions.

VMware vCenter AppSpeed provides proactive performance management and service-level reporting for applications running within virtual appliances. By analyzing the traffic that flows between end-users, Web applications, and back-end servers, AppSpeed provides visibility into multitier applications and enables rapid identification of performance issues originating from inadequate resource allocation and application problems.

The new AppSpeed features include:

• Enhanced AppSpeed scalability AppSpeed scalability has been enhanced, enabling a single AppSpeed Server to monitor significantly larger environments (more servers, applications and transactions). You can now specifically exclude servers that do not need to be monitored.
• Central management for multiple AppSpeed Servers You can now install more than one AppSpeed Server and control the environment of each AppSpeed Server from a single user interface. This enables additional scalability for monitoring large environments, while delivering centralized visibility of application performance and service levels.
• Enhanced mapping capabilities Improvements have been made in the mapping algorithms, enabling smarter, more accurate application grouping and transaction analysis.
• Topology editing from the user interface You can now merge, split or delete applications, providing greater control over how your monitoring data is presented. All of the operations are accessible from the AppSpeed user interface.
• Enhanced security using a vCenter-based authentication model Connection to AppSpeed Servers is now authenticated against vCenter. A new AppSpeed privilege has been introduced and AppSpeed access is now only granted to AppSpeed-privileged users.
• New latency-focused Analysis views Two new latency-focused analysis views have been introduced in the AppSpeed user interface, enabling more detailed visibility for latency analysis and troubleshooting:
  • A view that compares a single application or transaction latency between servers
  • A view that compares transaction or server latency with their latency baselines, pointing to latency anomalies

VMware vCenter CapacityIQ is a capacity management and planning tool for VMware Infrastructure environments. CapacityIQ helps you:
Eliminate waste by identifying any unused or over-allocated capacity
Reduce operational overhead by automating routine capacity monitoring and management tasks
Minimize business risk of outages or failures resulting from capacity bottlenecks and shortfalls
CapacityIQ supports VirtualCenter 2.5, Update 4 and Update 5 and vCenter Server 4.0.x, managing hosts running ESX Server 3.0.1 through ESX 4.0.x.

Key Features
This section describes the key features available in CapacityIQ.

Capacity Awareness
View and analyze past, present, and future capacity states at-a-glance with dashboard graphs and tables.
Eliminate costly routine monitoring and management tasks through automation using customized capacity thresholds and alerts.
Capacity Optimization
Reclaim excess capacity from idle, oversized, or powered-off virtual machines.
Size and allocate capacity for each virtual machine based on historical and future needs.
Place virtual machines in the most optimal clusters to eliminate further waste.
Capacity Prediction

Simulate one-time business events to quantify potential business impact.
Identify the timing of potential capacity shortfalls based on trends and forecasts.
Purchase and provision capacity as and when needed.

Support for VMware vSphere 4.0 Update 1

Lab Manager 4.0.1 supports ESX Server 4.0 Update 1 and vCenter Server 4.0 Update 1.

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Guest Operating Systems

Lab Manager 4.0 provided experimental support for Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) and Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit) guest operating systems. Lab Manager 4.0.1 provides full support for these operating systems. In addition, Lab Manager 4.0.1 supports guest customization for Windows 7 (64-bit) using Microsoft Sysprep.

Requirements:

vCenter Server 4.0 Update 1 or later, and
ESX Server 4.0 Update 1 or later or ESX Server 3.5 Update 5 or later
Thin Provisioning Virtual Machine and Virtual Machine Template Virtual Disks

When you create a virtual machine template or add a virtual hard disk to a virtual machine or virtual machine template, you can choose to use thin provisioning. In Lab Manager 4.0, all virtual hard disks used the thick format.

Thin provisioned format Use this format to save storage space. A thin virtual disk starts small and, at first, uses just as much storage space as it needs for its initial operations. When the virtual disk requires more space, it can grow to its maximum capacity and occupy the entire datastore space originally provisioned to it.
Thick format This is the default virtual disk format. A thick virtual disk does not change its size and from the very beginning occupies the entire datastore space provisioned to it.
NOTE: You cannot specify the disk format if the disk resides on an NFS datastore. The NFS server determines the allocation policy for the disk.

Refer to the known issues related to thin disks.

Improved Version of SSMove

The version of SSMove included with Lab Manager 4.0.1 allows you to move all the trees on a datastore at once. Previously, you had to move each tree on a datastore separately.

Export to vCenter Enhancements

When you export a virtual machine template or configuration from Lab Manager to vCenter, you can select a destination resource pool and inventory location.

Highlighted New and Improved Features

• Faster 3D performance, with Windows Experience scores 20-80% faster than before on Mac OS X Snow Leopard
• Reduced time for resuming virtual machines
• Supports import of standalone VHD disks into VMware virtual machines
• Supports import of Parallels Desktop 5 virtual machines into VMware virtual machines
• New 64-bit native networking subsystem to match the 64-bit native engine
• PC Migration Agent and Migration Assistant Improvements
• Adds support for Windows Server 2008 R2
• Installer localized into all supported languages
• Shows progress that VMware Tools are being installed in last step of migrating the PC
• Does not automatically show the PC Migration Agent application in the resulting virtual machine
• Adds only one network adapter to imported PC virtual machines
• Unity View Improvements
• “Always On” Applications menu defaults to the active virtual machine, and if more than one virtual machine is running, the menu defaults to the one that has focus
• Fixes a problem in which the “Always On” Application menu was not populated in some cases
• Improves the Aero-in-Unity experience with better interactive performance and easier readability of window titles
• Improves Unity view interactive performance for 32-bit Windows applications running on 64-bit Windows operating systems
• Ability to dismiss system tray menus in Unity view with only one click
• Small mouse wheel scroll increments work correctly in Unity view
• Fixes keyboard focus issues in Unity view when multiple windows are opened and closed
• Fixes a problem in which Adobe Fireworks, Photoshop, and some other applications would drop out of Unity view, causing the Waiting for Unity window to appear
• Fixes a problem in which VMware Fusion would fail when processing very large icons from Windows applications
• Fixes a problem in which VMware Fusion could not create Windows applications in the dock for those with really long application names
• Shared/Mirrored Folders Improvements
• Outlook 2007 preview works with Mirrored Folders enabled
• Applications no longer crash when saving exceedingly long path and file names with mapped drives
• Saving files in shared folders with a PC using ZoneAlarm antivirus software no longer causes Windows to fail
• WDDM (Windows Vista and Windows 7) Graphics Improvements
• Windows Experience graphics scores are 20-80% better than VMware Fusion 3.0
• Greatly improved HD video playback for Windows Vista and Windows 7
• Older games (including Diablo II, Homeworld, and others) play now on Windows Vista and Windows 7
• Windows Media Player no longer stretches video
• Fuzzy text in Windows Aero is fixed
• Interactive performance on ATI video cards with Aero is greatly improved in combination with Mac OS X 10.6.2
• Windows 7 no longer boots to an incorrect resolution

General Graphics Improvements

• Fixes fuzzy text in WPF applications
• Improved 3D performance
• Linux Improvements
• Adds support for Ubuntu 9.10 32-bit and 64-bit editions, including Easy Install and Unity view
• Fixes choppy sound problems with newest Linux guests with kernel version 2.6.30+
• Fixes Easy Install problems when double quotes were used in password
• Improves Tools support for latest 2.6.z kernels
• FreeBSD Improvements
• Prebuilt modules for FreeBSD 8.x
• Mac OS X Server Improvements
• Faster boot times for Mac OS X Server guests
• Other Fixes and Improvements
• Multicore support for Windows 7 works correctly for all editions of Windows 7. Previously it did not work for Windows Home Premium, Home Basic, and Starter editions
• Fixes a performance problem in which Spotlight would continually search the Mac for virtual machines when the Virtual Machine Library was left open, causing slow downs
• Fixes a problem in which the VMware Tools included with VMware Fusion 2.0.5 would not be updated correctly
• Fixes a problem in which it was not possible to use a CD drive on certain hardware-specific versions of Mac OS X 10.6.1. This is also fixed by upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6.2
• Fixes a problem in which the ThinPrint driver would cause printing problems in 64-bit Windows Boot Camp partitions
• Favorite virtual machine opens correctly when launching VMware Fusion 3
• Contains a fix for Link State Propagation for bridged networking that previously failed, in some cases, after installing VMware Fusion 3.0
• Fixes a problem in which you could not switch Spaces desktops away from a full-screen virtual machine if the Full Screen view title bar was hidden
• Fixes miscellaneous memory leaks in the VMware Fusion UI and during AutoProtect snapshots
• Speeds up navigation in the Virtual Machine Library when you have 10 or more virtual machines
• Removes console log spew by VMware Fusion Helper
• In the Preview window, the View mode buttons show enabled and selected state
• Fixes black flash when suspending a virtual machine in Single Window view
• Virtual Machine Library and Preview window previously had poor quality for European language users

Notes:

1. Not all combinations of VirtualCenter and ESX Server versions are supported. All of these highlighted features are available only if you are using VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 5 with ESX Server 3.5 Update 5. See the ESX Server, VirtualCenter, and VMware Infrastructure Client Compatibility Matrixes for more information on compatibility.
2. VMware recommends VMware Tools upgrade for this version of ESX Server.

The following information provides highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware ESX Server:

Enablement of Intel Xeon Processor 3400 Series – Support for the Intel Xeon processor 3400 series has been added. Support includes Enhanced VMotion capabilities. For additional information on previous processor families supported by Enhanced VMotion, see Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support (KB 1003212).

Driver Update for Broadcom bnx2 Network Controller – The driver for bnx2 controllers has been upgraded to version 1.6.9. This driver supports bootcode upgrade on bnx2 chipsets and requires bmapilnx and lnxfwnx2 tools upgrade from Broadcom. This driver also adds support for Network Controller – Sideband Interface (NC-SI) for SOL (serial over LAN) applicable to Broadcom NetXtreme 5709 and 5716 chipsets.

Driver Update for LSI SCSI and SAS Controllers – The driver for LSI SCSI and SAS controllers is updated to version 2.06.74. This version of the driver is required to provide a better support for shared SAS environments.

Newly Supported Guest Operating Systems – Support for the following guest operating systems has been added specifically for this release:

For more complete information about supported guests included in this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=software.

• Windows 7 Enterprise (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Professional (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 2008 R2 Standard Edition (64-bit)
• Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (64-bit)
• Windows 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition (64-bit)
• Windows 2008 R2 Web Server (64-bit)
• Ubuntu Desktop 9.04 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Ubuntu Server 9.04 (32-bit and 64-bit)

Newly Supported Management Agents – See VMware ESX Server Supported Hardware Lifecycle Management Agents for current information on supported management agents.

Newly Supported Network Cards – This release of ESX Server supports HP NC375T (NetXen) PCI Express Quad Port Gigabit Server Adapter.