VMware has released Update 1 for ESXi and vCenter 5.1 which has some major improvements, bug and security fixes. I am very happy to see that we can now start using Windows Server 2012.

What’s new?

• vCenter Server is now supported on Windows Server 2012
• vCenter Server now supports the following databases.
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2012
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2
• vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:
  • Windows 8
  • Windows Server 2012
  • Ubuntu 12.04
  • RHEL 5.9
• vCenter Essentials no longer enforces vRAM usage limit of 192 GB

Some important notes

1. The following guest operating system releases that are no longer supported by their respective operating system vendors are deprecated. Future vSphere releases will not support these guest operating systems, although vSphere 5.1 Update 1 does support them.
   • Windows NT
   • All 16-bit Windows and DOS releases (Windows 98, Windows 95, Windows 3.1)
   • Debian 4.0 and 5.0
   • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1
   • SUSE Linux Enterprise 8
   • SUSE Linux Enterprise 9 prior to SP4
   • SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 prior to SP3
   • SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Prior to SP1
   • Ubuntu releases 8.04, 8.10, 9.04, 9.10 and 10.10
   • All releases of Novell Netware
   • All releases of IBM OS/2
2. Virtual machines that are compatible with ESX 3.x and later (hardware version 4) are supported with ESXi 5.1 Update 1 . Virtual machines that are compatible with ESX 2.x and later (hardware version 3) are no longer supported. To use such virtual machines on ESXi 5.1 Update 1 , upgrade the virtual machine compatibility.
3. VMware Toolbox: vSphere 5.1 is the last release to include support for the VMware Tools graphical user interface, VMware Toolbox. VMware will continue to update and support the Toolbox command-line interface (CLI) to perform all VMware Tools functions.
4. Windows Server 2012 Failover Clustering is not supported
   If you attempt to create a cluster for Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2012, and select to run validation tests, the wizard completes the validation tests with warnings, and after that returns to running the validation tests again. The wizard in the Windows Server 2012 guest operating system does not continue to the cluster creation stage.
5. vSphere 5 Storage vMotion is unable to rename virtual machine files on completing migration
   This issue is resolved in this release. To enable this renaming feature, you need to configure the advanced settings in vCenter Server and set the value of the provisioning.relocate.enableRename parameter to true.

Release notes

For more information check out the official release notes:

• VMware ESXi 5.1 Update 1 Release Notes
• VMware vCenter Server 5.1 Update 1 Release Notes