What's new in vSphere 6.5, vSAN 6.5 and vRealize Automation 7.2

Here are the new features of vSphere 6.5, vSAN 6.5 and vRA 7.2

vSphere 6.5
- Introduction of vCenter HA without dependency of shared storage
- Granular based backup that can supplement image based backup tools
- Integrated Update Manager (VUM) is now integrated with VCSA. Doesn't need a Windows License.
It will be enable by default and can scale at any level of your VMware Cluster.
- New graphical interface is now available for Auto Deploy which easy and very intuitive.
- Native HTML5 Client is integrated.
- Both web clients will be available that can be run side by side.
- Automated migration process of Windows based vCenter to VCSA.
- ESXi secure boot and with trusted signed code.
- Applying encryption to individual machines
- Encrypted vMotion traffic.
- vSphere integrated containers offers docker containers
- REST APIs for Virtual machine operations for DevOps workflows.
- Orchestrated HA restart for tiered applications.

vSAN 6.5
vSAN Native Support for iSCSI Target
- Support for Physical servers. Which means an iSCSI lun can be provision for non-vSphere Physical workloads
- Support for MSCS with shared storage. 
- This also supports MS Exchange DAG with share witness node majority quorum.
- MS SQL Availability Groups with file share witness or node majorit quorum.
- Oracle RAC Support
- MS SQL Failover Cluster Instances support
- Since iSCSI natively supported other 3rd party hypervisors like MS Hyper-V are supported.

2 Node Direct Connect Support
- This means it has the ability two nodes directly using a crossover cable
- Two cables between hosts for higher av
- Support for T1 lines for ROBO scenarios

vSAN for Cloud Native Apps
- Support for vSphere Integrated containers
- It extends the support with Photon controllers to integrate with kubernetes and mesosphere.
- It can now run containerized storage in production environments.
- Native vSphere container data volumes support.
- Leverages existing vSphere/vSAN features.
- Developer-friendly APIs for storage provisioning and consumption.


vRealize Automation 7.2
1. Azure Endpoint - The ability to manage deployments in MS Azure
2. Container Management - Support for Docker hosts, containers with ability to consume docker compose files and covert to vRA blueprints.
3. ServiceNow Integration - ServiceNow service catalog and CMDB integration is possible now and is a feature out of the box.