vSphere 5.5 | vSphere 5.1 | Features |
| 320 | 160 | Physical CPUs per host |
| 4 TB | 2 TB | Physical RAM per host |
| 16 | 8 | NUMA nodes per host |
| 4096 | 2048 | Maximum vCPUs per host |
| 62 TB | 2TB | VMDK Size |
| 62 TB | 2TB | Max Size of Virtual RDM |
| 10 | 9 | VM Hardware Version |
| yes | No | 40 GBps physical Adapter support |
unlimited
| 32 GB | ESXi Free version RAM limit |
| 8-way virtual SMP | 8-way virtual SMP | ESXi Free version maximum vSMP |
Yes
| Support to run these HBAs at 16Gb. However, there is no support for full, end-to-end 16Gb connectivity from host to array | 16 GB fibre channel End-to-End support |
| Yes | No | APP HA |
| Yes | No | vFlash Read Cache support |
| Yes | No | VMware VSAN support |
| NVIDIA, AMD and Intel GPU | only NVIDIA | Expanded v-GPU and G-GPU support |
| 100 Hosts and 3000 Virtual Machines | 5 Hosts and 50 Virtual Machines | vCenter Server Appliance With Embedded Database support upto |
| Yes | No | Microsoft Windows 2012 Cluster Support |
| Intoduced in vSphere 5.5 | No | PDL (Permanent Device Loss) AutoRemove |
| Yes | No | Graphics acceleration support for Linux Guest OS |
| Yes | No | Hot-pluggable SSDPCIe devices |
| Yes | No | Support for Reliable Memory Technology |
| Processor power state (C-state) also is used, providing additional power savings and increased Performance | Host power management leveraged only the performance state (P-state), which kept the processor running at a lower frequency and voltage | CPU C-state Enhancement |
Yes | No | LSI SAS support for Oracle Solaris 11 OS |
| Yes | No | vSphere Big Data Extensions |
| Yes (Support upto 120 devices per VM) | No | SATA-based virtual device nodes via AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) support |
Supports up to 64 | one LACP group per distributed switch | Improved LACP Support |
| Version 5.5 can keep up to 24 historical snapshots | vSphere Replication kept only the most recent copy of a virtual machine | Multiple point-in-time replicas |