Things I Already Like In ESX 3.5/VC 2.5

Things I like so far in the ESX 3.5/VC 2.5, based on the upgrade I just did to my test servers:

• Round-robin multipath support.
• NTP configuration via VirtualCenter.
• Virtual machine MAC address configuration via VirtualCenter.
• Growing disk files via VirtualCenter.
• Paravirtualization options, even though it’ll probably be decades before any OS I run takes advantage of it.[0]
• The fact that you can VMotion between ESX 3.0 and 3.5 so the upgrade process looks almost brainless.[1]

The one thing that annoys me so far is the option to “Check and Upgrade VMware Tools at Power-up.” On the surface it looks cool, but on my Red Hat Enterprise Linux VMs the upgrade process leaves a non-functional network stack. At least with Windows it reboots the host. I’ll have to investigate that further and see if there is a way around that (please leave a comment if you know a way).

I also wish Storage VMotion could be done via the Virtual Infrastructure Client, but I’m not going to complain too loudly right now. The fact that it can be done at all is amazing. Beyond Storage VMotion, though, it really is the little improvements that are making me happy so far.

[0] Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Microsoft Windows.

[1] I’m starting to wonder what the catch is going to be. These things always have a catch, right?