What's New with VMware vSphere in VCF 9.1

This technical session covers what's new in vSphere as part of VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1. Féidhlim O'Leary walks through lifecycle management, VM management, and Kubernetes enhancements. Dave Morera covers workload acceleration including memory tiering, vMotion encryption offload, NUMA scheduling improvements, and expanded GPU support. Bob Plankers closes with platform security topics.

Topics include the upgrade path to vSphere 9.1, vCenter Quick Patch for targeted security patches without service disruption, the new vCenter Resize API and maintenance notification API, vCenter virtual hardware upgrade to version 17, zero-touch provisioning of ESX hosts, expanded ESX Live Patch coverage including TPM-enabled hosts and vSAN daemons, vSphere Configuration Profiles parity work with VDS bootstrapping and vSAN integration, automatic certificate renewals for default VMCA-issued certificates, vCenter scale and performance improvements, the redesigned ESX host client, native VCF Operations for Logs integration, enhanced guest OS customization with IPv6-only support and network-only customization, DRS non-disruptive vMotion evacuation, smarter vMotion batch scheduling, hot-extend for shared disks on vSAN, VKS 3.6 enhancements, memory tiering observability and software mirroring, vMotion encryption offload to Intel QuickAssist Technology, NUMA scheduling for high-density CPUs, AMD MI350X GPU support with Enhanced Direct Path I/O, AMD CPU IOMMU virtualization, NVIDIA hardware accelerator NICs, GPU-to-GPU RDMA over Converged Ethernet, NVIDIA B40 mixed-mode GPU consolidation, kernel stack canaries and read-only kernel parameters, the rewritten Virtual Machine Monitor running in deprivileged user mode, confidential computing through Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP, Supervisor Mode Access Prevention, ESX EDR partner integration, and vSAN data at rest encryption working alongside global deduplication.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction and Agenda
00:46 - Upgrade Path and vCenter Quick Patch
03:03 - Reduced Downtime Upgrade, Resize API, and Virtual Hardware
06:50 - Zero Touch Provisioning and ESX Live Patch
11:30 - vSphere Configuration Profiles
14:00 - Certificate Management and Automatic Renewals
15:30 - vCenter Performance and Utilization Monitoring
17:15 - ESX Host Client Redesign and Logs Integration
18:30 - Guest OS Customization
19:50 - DRS Non-Disruptive Evacuation and vMotion Batch Scheduling
24:00 - Hot-Extend Shared Disks on vSAN
24:50 - VKS and Kubernetes Enhancements
26:00 - Memory Tiering Observability and Software Mirroring
32:20 - vMotion Encryption Offload with Intel QuickAssist
34:30 - NUMA Placement and Topology-Aware Scheduling
36:20 - AMD MI350X GPU Support and AMD CPU IOMMU
38:55 - NVIDIA Accelerator NICs, RoCE GPU-to-GPU, and B40 Consolidation
42:30 - Security Introduction
43:40 - Identity Management and the Embedded Identity Broker
45:05 - Virtual Private Clouds and Connectivity Policies
46:40 - Kernel Stack Canaries and Read-Only Kernel Parameters
48:25 - Workload Isolation, VMM Rewrite, and Deprivileged VMM
50:50 - Confidential Computing
54:00 - Supervisor Mode Access Prevention
55:00 - ESX EDR Partner Integration
56:50 - vSAN Data at Rest Encryption with Global Deduplication
57:50 - Closing