Virtualization of servers is one of the hottest topics in today's IT environment. The ability to consolidate many physical servers into one physical server using virtual machines has led to dramatic changes in regard to business
continuity and disaster recovery strategies for small and large organizations alike. VMware has been a key leader in server virtualization for at least the last decade. In fact, most of the current Fortune 100 companies use VMware products as part of their network infrastructure.

One of the reasons that VMware continues to lead is that they haven't been content to "stand on their laurels" with their last product; instead they continue to stretch the technology, as well as the imagination, with their next product. vSphere, VMware's latest release, adds approximately 150 new features to its previous VI3 product! The purpose of this white paper is to highlight the most notable of these features and to discuss the benefits they offer your organization's IT infrastructure.

This paper is divided into three sections, based on three major types of improvements. First, we will discuss what's new in the overall vSphere product in regard to configuration maximums, installation, host profiles, and hot plug capability, as well as the concept of cloud computing. Second we will discuss the new features of the vCenter Server 4.0 and how they simplify management for you and reduce the complexity of working with large virtual environments. Finally, we will discuss the new business aspects of vSphere and the features included in each of the four editions of the product.