VMware announced yesterday the release of SRM 4.0-- fully compatible with vSphere 4. With hardware compatibility aside, there is now no reason to NOT upgrade your ESX/ESXi servers to vSphere 4 (assuming you have an Active SnS contract).

Here are the new features in SRM 4.0

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<ul>
	<li><strong>Full compatibility with vCenter 4.</strong></li>
	<li><strong>Full support for NFS-based arrays.</strong></li>
	<li><strong>Support for shared recovery sites.</strong>
Enables many-to-one pairings of protected sites with a recovery site. For more information, see the technical note <em>Installing, Configuring, and Using Shared Recovery Site Support</em> , which is available at <a href="http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/srm_pubs.html">http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/srm_pubs.html</a> .</li>
	<li><strong>Resilience in the face of vCenter unavailability during a test recovery.</strong>
Placeholder virtual machines can be quickly repaired after the protected site vCenter becomes available again.</li>
	<li><strong>New repair-mode installation features.</strong>
You can run the SRM installer in repair mode if you need to change configuration parameters such as vCenter credentials, database connection information or credentials, and certificate details.</li>
	<li><strong>Graphical interface to advanced settings.</strong>
Eliminates most requirements to edit the XML configuration file</li>
	<li><strong>Support for DB2 as an SRM database server.</strong></li>
	<li><strong>New licensing options.</strong></li>
	<li><strong>Improved scalability.</strong>
A single protection group can now include up to 1000 virtual machines.</li>
	<li><strong>Full Compatibility With DPM (Distributed Power Management)</strong>
SRM recovery plans can now power-on or power-off a host that is in standby mode.</li>
	<li><strong>New Option to dr-ip-customizer Utility</strong>
The dr-ip-customizer utility now logs less verbose diagnostic output by default. To force dr-ip-customizer to log the same level of diagnostic output that it produced in earlier releases, use the -verbose option.</li>
	<li><!--  407799 (4.0) --> <strong>Change in Certificate Validation</strong>
When you select certificate authentication, the SRM installation validates the certificate you supply before continuing. Certificates signed with an MD5 key are no longer allowed.</li>
	<li><strong>Support for Protecting Fault-Tolerant Virtual Machines.</strong>
SRM can now protect virtual machines that have been configured for fault-tolerant operation. When recovered, these virtual machines lose their fault tolerance, and must be manually reconfigured after recovery to restore fault tolerance.</li>
	<li><strong>Improved context-sensitive Help.</strong></li>
</ul>
New installations of SRM 4.0 are NOT compatible with older installations, though an upgrade is supported. It requires vCenter 4, however.