Hey guys, just looking for some feedback on whether I would regret rolling back to ESXi 5.5 on a new server we are just about to deploy. Basically it's a Dell R630 which comes with ESXi 6.5 installed out of the box, the main systems admin for the company has advised that we should roll it back to version 5.5 due to a compatibility issue with vCenter, the rest of the company are using 5.5 because of that (they didn't elaborate exactly on what the compatibility issue is, but it's something to do with vCenter not being able to manage the 6.5 version...)
I'm far from a VMWare expert but thought someone here may be able to chime in. This server is for a specific department, and doesn't need to be externally managed. So the compatibility concern is not really valid (we don't need other vCenter instances in the company to manage this server). So really I would like to know if there are any important pros / cons of 6.5 compared to 5.5. I'm leaning to just go with 5.5 if there is no reason that 6.5 would be an advantage, just wondering if there is any good reason to consider sticking with the newer 6.5 ESXi version.
I have read that the 6.5 version only has the web client, whereas 5.5 has a thick client. That may be something to do with the limitation they've mentioned.
Bonus question, on a current 5.5 ESXi server I've worked with, I have noticed Windows 10 performance is not always great. There also aren't templates for newer operating systems, e.g. Server 2012 and Win 8 are the highest the templates refer to when making a new VM, and specifying the OS. Just wondering if that may be related, or what impact that even has on the performance of the VM. It may just be a template that specifys the default amount of disk / mem etc, rather than impacting compatibility / performance.