In this quick post I’ll list the new features available in ESXi v9
CPU
- Support Intel Hardware Performance States (HWP) on Sapphire Rapids and later CPUs:
- Support for 5th generation AMD EPYC processors, formerly codenamed Turin.
- Support for Intel Granite Rapids Series processors, designed for high-performance computing applications.
Accelerators
- Memory Tiering, ESX 9.0 officially launches the Memory Tiering capability, which enables you to add NVMe devices locally to an ESX host as tiered memory.
- Device Selection Policies for Enhanced vGPU Devices, you can use the vSphere Client to configure device selection policies, which gives you greater control over how vGPU devices are allocated in the graphic policies. You can choose a performance-focused policy, which evenly distributes Virtual Functions (VFs) across physical devices, or a consolidation-focused policy, which packs VFs onto fewer devices to provide more flexibility. This feature helps optimize hardware utilization based on your specific workload and operational goals.
- Automated Device Reconfiguration for Enhanced DirectPath I/O with multiple profiles or capabilities, such as GPUs or crypto/compression accelerators. This eliminates the need for system administrators to manually configure such devices to the desired profile or capability. Reconfiguration is performed transparently, when needed, during VM power-on or migration, based on the VM requirements and attributes.
- vSphere vMotion Optimizations for vGPU Workloads. This optimization reduces vGPU VM down time.
- Enhanced DirectPath I/O support for non-checkpointable devices. For VMs with Enhanced DirectPath I/O, you can hot-add memory, vCPUs, virtual devices (NICs), activate VM debugging or statistics capabilities, and use Storage vMotion. Examples of devices that benefit from this feature include Intel's Dynamic Load Balancer (DLB) and the AMD MI200 GPU.
- Virtual IOMMU Support for Enhanced DirectPath I/O, adds support for Virtual Input-Output Memory Management Units (vIOMMU) for VMs using Enhanced DirectPath I/O, increasing the security of guest OS applications.
Guest Platform for Workloads
The following guest operating system releases are new for
ESX 9.0:
- Pardus
- Red Hat Core OS
- Miracle Linux
- ProLinux
- Kylin Linux
- FusionOS
- RHEL 10
- Oracle Linux 10
- Debian 13
- FreeBSD 15
Virtual Hardware Version 22:
vCenter 9.0 introduces virtual hardware version 22 to to
ensure support for the latest guest operating system versions and increase
maximums as follows:
Supported maximums
- 960 logical processors
- 960 cores per socket
Storage
- Boot over NVMe/FC SAN. ESX 9.0 adds support for booting over with the latest implementation of NVMe/Fibre Channel (FC). This feature enables seamless boot operations from remote NVMe storage over FC networks, providing enhanced flexibility and performance for environments that rely on SAN-based storage.
- Boot over NVMe/TCP SAN. ESX 9.0 supports device specification TP-8012 for NVMe/TCP. This new implementation enables support for boot from NVMe/TCP storage, offering more flexibility for booting over a SAN, and providing new opportunities to leverage remote NVMe/TCP storage in your environment, making it easier to deploy and manage your storage solutions.
- NSX VIBs Included with ESX and Live Patch Support
- Virtual networking ESX kernel modules (VIBs) are included with ESX by default. This reduces the complexity and time required to install and upgrade virtual networking features. With this change, NSX VIBs on ESX Hosts now support ESX Live Patch in addition to the ESX maintenance upgrade. With Live Patch, the upgrades can happen without the need to put hosts into maintenance mode, and with no impact on vMotion or DRS operations.
