VMware Data Services Manager version 1.5 now available
I am delighted to announce that VMware Data Services Manager version 1.5 is now generally available. This new version has a number of significant enhancements which I will detail in this post. Many of the updates included in this release are a direct result of the feedback we have received from customers. If you wish to try out VMware Data Services Manager v1.5, you will find it here. For more detailed information on what is included and what is changed in this release, check out the full release notes here.
Support for vSphere 8.0.x
Prior to this release, VMware Data Services Manager was only compatible with vSphere 6.7 & vSphere 7.x. After testing and validation by our engineering teams, we are now pleased to announce that VMware DSM v1.5 is also compatible with vSphere 8.0.x.
Consolidated Agent
One of the most significant pieces of feedback that we heard was around the requirement to deploy an Agent VM on the same vSphere infrastructure as the Provider VM. Would it not make more sense to have a single VM to take on both roles of Provider and Agent when dealing with a single vSphere environment? We heard this loud and clear, and in the version 1.5 release, there is a new Consolidated Agent that is included with the Provider VM. Now to setup DSM, you only need to deploy a single VM to handle both the Provider and Agent roles. Of course, when dealing with multiple vSphere infrastructures, a separate Agent VM is still available to enable communication between the Provider and the remote vSphere environments.
Simplified Networking Requirements
Another significant piece of feedback that we heard from customers is that our networking requirements for DSM are rather complex. For those of you familiar with previous versions, you would be cognizant of the fact that we required 3 distinct networks; a management network, a control plane network and an application network. The Provider VM is provisioned on the management and control plane networks, the agent VMs are provisioned on the control plane network, and the database VMs are provisioned on the control plane and application networks. Each of these networks also have various requirements around DNS and DHCP. Once again, we heard loud and clear that we should try to simplify these requirements, which we have done in VMware Data Services Manager version 1.5. There is now no longer a requirement to have a control plane network. There is only a requirement for a management network and an application network. Providers and Agent VMs deploy to the management network, whilst the database VMs now deploy to both the management and the application networks. All communication which previously passed over the control plane network now passes over the management network. This greatly simplifies the networking requirements for a VMware Data Services Manager deployment.
Support for PostgreSQL 14 and PostgreSQL 15
With VMware DSM version 1.4, the highest version of PostgreSQL that is supported is version 13. With the release of VMware DSM version 1.5, we are delighted to be able to support both PostgreSQL version 14 and 15. This has been an ask from a number of our customers, so it is great new that we can now support these later versions.
As you can see, there are a significant number of big-ticket items included in this new release of VMware Data Services Manager version 1.5. As mentioned in the opening paragraph, the release notes have much more information on all of the new features and functionality, so please check them out here. I’ll be doing a number of blog posts to highlight some of these newer features in more detail over the coming weeks.
