By Brian Suhr

Hot off the presses! The latest update for VMware vSphere is now available for download. Both Update 2 for ESX 4.0, ESXi 4.0 and vCenter 4.0 are all available now. Run don’t walk to your nearest PC with a fast connection and start downloading. Ok don’t run you might crash into something. Have fun playing with the latest update in your labs. You can download the latest version here.

Here are some of the release notes for ESX 4.0 U2, see full list here.

• Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors.
• Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors.
• Enablement of IOMMU Functionality for AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors without input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables IOMMU functionality for the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors.
• Enhancement of the esxtop/resxtop utility— vSphere 4.0 Update 2 includes an enhancement of the performance monitoring utilities, esxtop and resxtop. The esxtop/resxtop utilities now provide visibility into the performance of NFS datastores in that they display the following statistics for NFS datastores: Reads/s, writes/s, MBreads/s, MBwrtn/s, cmds/s, GAVG/s(guest latency).
• Additional Guest Operating System Support— ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2 adds support for Ubuntu 10.04.

Here are some of the release notes for ESX 4.0 U2, see full list here.

• Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors.
• Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors.
• Enablement of IOMMU Functionality for AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors without input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables IOMMU functionality for the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors.
• Enhancement of the resxtop utility— vSphere 4.0 U2 includes an enhancement of the performance monitoring utility, resxtop. The resxtop utility now provides visibility into the performance of NFS datastores in that it displays the following statistics for NFS datastores: Reads/s, writes/s, MBreads/s, MBwrtn/s, cmds/s, GAVG/s (guest latency).
• Additional Guest Operating System Support— ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2 adds support for Ubuntu 10.04.

Here are some of the release notes for vCenter 4.0 U2, see full list here.

• Guest Operating System Customization Improvements: vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:
  • Windows XP Professional SP2 (x64) serviced by Windows Server 2003 SP2
  • SLES 11 (x32 and x64)
  • SLES 10 SP3 (x32 and x64)
  • RHEL 5.5 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
  • RHEL 5.4 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
  • RHEL 4.8 Server Platform (x32 and 64)
  • Debian 5.0 (x32 and x64)
  • Debian 5.0 R1 (x32 and x64)
  • Debian 5.0 R2 (x32 and x64)

Brian Suhr is a Senior Virtualization Engineer and Architect working for HP Enterprise Services. He’s worked in the IT Industry since 1991, and worked for several companies. He runs the blog virtualizetips to document tips and problems encountered during his projects and reads. A VMware Certified Professional (VCP VI3.5) MCSE on Windows NT – 2000, Cisco CCNA/CCDA. Brian is currently working on upgrading my VCP to vSphere and will be pursuing VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) next.