Get shared storage benefits without the shared storage cost and complexity. VMware vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) transforms the local storage within your servers into a shared storage resource that runs your virtualized applications. VSA allows you to achieve business continuity and eliminates any single point of failure within your IT environment. With VSA, you can:
- Deploy and manage cost-effective software-based shared storage easily
- Get High Availability without shared storage hardware
- Enable business continuity protection for any small environment
- Find out what’s new in VMware vSphere Storage Appliance 5.1
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vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) is a software product that transforms the server's internal storage from several server hosts into a single shared storage resource. This means dedicated shared storage hardware (such as SANs) are no longer required for several servers to access the same data, further simplifying IT.
VSA is an ideal storage solution for small environments (such as SMBs or larger customers with a network of distributed branch environments) that don’t have shared storage hardware in their environment, or are not considering getting shared storage hardware. Customers with shared storage hardware can also deploy VSA on their existing servers to provide additional shared storage capacity.
VSA is a software product that transforms the server's internal storage from several server hosts into a single shared storage resource.
No, there is no special need to learn storage or storage configuration with VSA. VSA automatically configures the host’s disk and is managed through the vCenter.
When purchased on a standalone basis, vSphere Storage Appliance is licensed per instance (similar to vCenter Server). Each license supports the creation of one VSA cluster, with up to three nodes.
VSA is included in vSphere Essentials Plus. Larger customers interested in deploying VSA for a network of branch offices can purchase vSphere Essentials Plus with VSA for ROBO. VSA is also available for purchase on a standalone basis.
Yes, VSA is part of the vSphere evaluation, which is valid for 60 days.
Yes, a customer can buy more than one license for VSA. One license for VSA supports the creation of one VSA cluster (up to three nodes).
VSA 5.1 can be easily installed on new or existing virtual environments (brownfield deployment). vCenter Server can be deployed within the VSA cluster by running a vCenter Server instance in a virtual machine on a local datastore on one of the nodes in a VSA cluster. VMware recommends using RAID 5, 6, 10 within each server.
You can transition from VMware VSA to your new SAN or NAS without service disruption if you use Storage vMotion.
VSA scales to support up to three virtualized hosts in a cluster per instance. You can manage multiple VSA clusters (at least 150) through one vCenter Server instance.
With VSA 5.1, you can add bigger and more hard disk drives as your storage capacity needs increase post-installation. JBOD extension is also supported.
vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) is a software product that transforms the server's internal storage from several server hosts into a single shared storage resource. This means dedicated shared storage hardware (such as SANs) are no longer required for several servers to access the same data, thereby further simplifying IT.
All VSA datastores have two levels of protection:
- Network mirror between servers
- Local RAID within each server
The network mirroring across nodes will protect against node failure.
Please see the latest Hardware Compatibility List (HCL).
vSphere 5.0 and 5.1. VSA does not support earlier versions of vSphere.
VSA supports Essentials Plus, Standard, Standard with Operations Management, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus editions of vSphere.
No, the VSA doesn’t require any special storage network. It works with the IP network.
No, you need a minimum of two nodes to run the VSA.
Yes, but those VMs have to be managed by the same vCenter instance.
No, VSA is configured and managed through vCenter.
VSA can be installed during the vSphere install process. vCenter Server must be running to install VSA .
vCenter has a new tab that facilitates managing VSA.
