Hot on the heels of the vSphere 6.0 Update 1 release last week, VMware today released vSphere 5.5 Update 3 that has some new stuff in it and the usual fixes and enhancements. With vSphere 6.0 being out for over a year now I’m willing to bet this will be the last big update that you’ll see to vSphere 5.5.

• ESXi 5.5 U3: Release Notes -=- Download Page
• vCenter Server 5.5 U3: Release Notes -=- Download Page

This release of VMware ESXi contains the following enhancements:

• Log Rotation Enablement – Log rotation for vmx files allows you to reduce the log file sizes by specifying the size of each log and the number of previous logs to keep.
• Certification of PVSCSI Adapter – PVSCSI adapter is certified for use with MSCS, core clustering and applications including SQL and Exchange. This creates performance gains when moving from LSI Logic SAS to PVSCSI.
• Support for Next Generation Processors – In this release we will continue our support for next generation processors from Intel and AMD. Please see the VMware Compatibility Guide for more info.
• ESXi Authentication for Active Directory – ESXi is modified to only support AES256-CTS/AES128-CTS/RC4-HMAC encryption for Kerberos communication between ESXi and Active Directory.

What’s New in vCenter Server:

• vCenter Server database support: vCenter Server now supports the following external databases: Oracle 12c R1 P2 (12.1.0.2), Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 2, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 3
• Increased guest operating system support: vCenter Server has added support for the following guest operating systems: CentOS 7.0,
  Oracle Linux 7.0, Ubuntu 14.10, Windows 10, RHEL 6.6, RHEL 7 .1, CentOS 7.1, Oracle Linux 7.1
• Features Added: Log information of files uploaded and downloaded from a host using vSphere Web Client or vSphere Client are stored. For more details see KB 2117341

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