VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x on Dell PowerEdge Systems Release Notes

New features

The table lists some of the new and enhanced features of VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x.

Table 1. New features in VMware vSphere ESXi 8.xThe table lists some of the new features in VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x.
Functional area	Feature description	Summary of benefits
Release model	New initial availability (IA) or general availability (GA) model	VMware is introduced a new release model with vSphere 8.0, all major and update vSphere releases are released with IA designation (production quality release) followed by GA release. For more information, see New Release Model for vSphere 8.
Hardware enablement	Data processing unit (DPU)	Network processes such as network traffic and distributed firewall are offloaded from x86 host to DPU. Using vSphere distributed switch 8.0 and NSX, network services are offloaded to DPU. For more information, see The rise of DPUs in the Infrastructure.
Workload offloads	Using vSphere distributed switch 8.0 and NSX, network services are offloaded to DPU.	N/A
Security	TPM provision policy	Cloning a virtual machine (VM) with a virtual trusted platform module (vTPM), virtual machine can introduce a security risk as TPM secrets are cloned. vTPM can be automatically replaced during clone or deployment operations.
Security	Prevents execution of untrusted binaries	In ESXi 8.0 onwards, prevents execution of binaries that are not installed through a VIB.
Security	Secure shell (SSH) timeout	SSH access is deactivated by default, and a default timeout is introduced on SSH sessions lingering.
Security	Support for trusted platform module 1.2 is discontinued in VMware ESXi 8.0.	ESXi 8.0 deployment does not fail on hosts with TPM 1.2.