vSphere 4.1 Maintains VMware at the Front of the Virtual Infrastructure Pack
by Cameron Sturdevant
Network I/O Control
A vNetwork Distributed Switch can now assign priority to a variety of traffic types.
Memory Compression
vSphere 4.1 now adds a method to compress memory pages to reduce swapping and improve performance.
Storage I/O Control
vSphere 4.1 manages storage contention between VMs by enabling IT managers to assign priority to each machine.
Storage Performance
It was easy to track VM storage usage to help determine storage priority assignments.
vCenter 4.1
VMware did some housekeeping in this release. The vSphere Client is still available in the vCenter command and control center but has been removed from the ESX and ESXi bits.
ESX 4.1
There’s nothing drastically different in the installation process of ESX 4.1. However, the significant new network, memory and storage management features will take some study to implement to your best advantage.