Lab Manager 2.5.1 does not support ESX Server 3.5.
All hosts in a VMware HA cluster must have DNS configured so that the short host name (without the domain suffix) of any host in the cluster can be resolved to the appropriate IP address from any other host in the cluster.
If a host is added to a cluster, you can no longer create child resource pools of that host. You can create child resource pools of the cluster if the cluster is enabled for Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS).
You cannot use VMotion to migrate a virtual machine with a guest operating system with 16GB of memory or more to ESX Sever 3.5 hosts or earlier. Resize the guest operating system memory or migrate to a compatible version of ESX Server 3.
Using VI Client or VI Web Access ensures that the starting sectors of partitions are 64K aligned, which improves storage performance.
In centralized license server mode, license files are located at the following default location on the machine running the VMware license server: C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware License Server\Licenses. This is different from VirtualCenter 2.0, where the default location of the license file was C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware License Server\vmware.lic. which no longer exists.
The VI Client installer installs Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 on your machine. If you have an older version, the VirtualCenter Server installer upgrades your version to version 2.0.
While installing ESX Server 3.5, the option to create a default network for virtual machines is selected by default. If you proceed with installing ESX Server 3.5 with this option selected, your virtual machines share a network adapter with the service console, which does not provide optimal security.
Manage remote console connections—You can now configure VirtualCenter 2.5 to set the maximum number of allowed console connections (0 to 100) to all virtual machines.
VirtualCenter 2.5 provides an unlicensed evaluation mode that doesn’t require that you install and configure a license server while installing VirtualCenter 2.5 and ESX Server 3.
Virtual Center 2.5 can Manage up to 200 hosts and 2000 virtual machines
ESX Server 3.5 supports 256GB of physical memory and virtual machines with 64GB of RAM.
ESX Server hosts support for up to 32 logical processors
SATA support—ESX Server 3.5 supports selected SATA devices connected to dual SAS/SATA controllers
ESX Server 3.5 introduces support for N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) for Fibre Channel SANs. Each virtual machine can now have its own World Wide Port Name (WWPN).
VMotion migration of virtual machines with local swap files is supported only across ESX Server 3.5 hosts and later with VirtualCenter 2.5 and later
Enhanced HA provides experimental support for monitoring individual virtual machine failures. VMware HA can now be set up to either restart the failed virtual machine or send a notification to the administrator.
Storage VMotion simplifies array migration and upgrade tasks and reduces I/O bottlenecks by moving virtual machines to the best available storage resource in your environment.Migrations using Storage VMotion must be administered through the Remote Command Line Interface (Remote CLI)
VirtualCenter 2.5 provides support for batch installations of VMware Tools where VMware Tools can now be updated for selected groups of virtual machines. VMware Tools upgrades can now be scheduled for the next boot cycle
