What’s New in ESXi and vCenter 6.5 Update 3?

by Davoud Teimouri · Published 04/07/2019 · Updated 21/08/2019

VMware has released ESXi 6.5 update 3 and vCenter 6.5 U3 at July 2, the new releases are including some new features and lot of resolved issues.

On This Post:

What’s New in ESXi 6.5 Update 3

The ESXi 6.5 Update 3 release includes the following list of new features.

The ixgben driver adds queue pairing to optimize CPU efficiency.

With ESXi 6.5 Update 3 you can track license usage, refresh switch topology and see improvements in the search and Developer Center in the vSphere Client.
ESXi 6.5 Update 3 provides legacy support for AMD Zen 2 servers.
Multiple driver updates: ESXi 6.5 Update 3 provides updates to the lsi-msgpt2, lsi-msgpt35, lsi-mr3, lpfc/brcmfcoe, qlnativefc, smartpqi, nvme, nenic, ixgben, i40en and bnxtnet drivers.

ESXi 6.5 Update 3 provides support for Windows Server Failover Clustering and Windows Server 2019.
ESXi 6.5 Update 3 adds the com.vmware.etherswitch.ipfixbehavior property to distributed virtual switches to enable you to choose how to track your inbound and outbound traffic, and utilization. With a value of 1, the com.vmware.etherswitch.ipfixbehaviorproperty enables sampling in both ingress and egress directions. With a value of 0, you enable sampling in egress direction only, which is also the default setting.

Note: You can update current ESXi version (According to upgrade path) to ESXi 6.5 U3 by update file or vendors images. Vendor images are my preferred way.

What’s New in vCenter 6.5 U3

The vCenter Server 6.5 Update 3 release includes the following list of new features.

With vCenter Server 6.5 Update 3, events related to adding, removing, or modifying user roles display the user that initiates the changes.
vSphere Auditing Improvements: vCenter Server 6.5 Update 3 improves VMware vCenter Single Sign-On auditing by adding events for the following operations: user management, login, group creation, identity source, and policy updates. The new feature is available only for vCenter Server Appliance with an embedded Platform Services Controller and not for vCenter Server for Windows or vCenter Server Appliance with an external Platform Services Controller. Supported identity sources are vsphere.local, Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA), and Active Directory over LDAP.