VMware ESXi 4.1 Update 2 released – support CPUs from AMD and Ubuntu 11.2

Maintenance releaseof VMware ESXi 4.1 Update 2 with some new features too. Even if vSphere 5 has been released more than 2 months ago and brought up more than 150 new features, the ESXi 4.1 got a face lift with this new update from VMware. This second update is mainly maintenance release, but new features has been introduced as well.

Some new CPU supports has been announced as well. The new Supported CPU's in the ESXi 4.1 U2 release are AMD Opteron 6200 series (Interlagos) and AMD Opteron 4200 series (Valencia). Also Ubuntu 11.10 guest operating system is now supported in this release.

All the patches released after the release of ESXi 4.1 U1 has been integrated in the ESXi 4.1 Update 2 release. There has been many bugfixes handled in this release as well.

One of them, and this is pretty amazing, is concerning the NT4 VMs. Or rather the VMware Tools, which were showing a message that the tools are outdated, but wasn't. I mean it's pretty amazing that the NT4 support is still there and VMware continues to support those older systems.

VMware ESXi 4.1 Update 2 – The releases:

ESXi 4.1 Update 2 Installable –  Build 502767
ESXi 4.1 Update 2 Embedded –  Build 502767
VMware vCenter Server 4.1 Update 2 – Build 493063

You should read the ESXi Installable and vCenter Server Setup Guide for step-by-step how-to on installing and configuring ESXi Instalable and vCenter Server or the ESXi Embedded and vCenter Server Setup Guide for step-by-step how-to on setting up ESXi Embedded and vCenter Server. VMware ESXi 4.1 Update 2 provides virtual hardware version 7 capability.

The interesting thing is if you for example planning the upgrade path, you should definitely go and visit this page, where you can actually simulate which component you want to upgrade. In my case I just selected the Upgrade Path and vCenter server. I was able just to roll a mouse over a vCenter 4.0 to see that the in-place upgrade is possible in the case that my vCenter server is already running on x64 system…. very handy indeed. VMware ESXi 4.1 Update 2 provides the latest securit corrections too, and also stays compatible with previous releases of VMware vSphere.

You can have a look here. VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes

See the Full release notes about the VMware ESXi 4.1 Update 2 release here.

Source: VMware