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nava_thulasi39

VSA

Hi,

What will be the purpose of VSA in SMB?

There are some article but it makes to how configure & Implement? Looking for some basic information.

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Mouhamad
Expert
Expert

Hello Nava,

VSA allow SMB to use the HA and vMotion and other VMware features that previously required the existing of a SAN.

Now with VSA, VMware allows its customers to get benefit of these features without having a SAN.

The below article is really intersting if you're looking for more information.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/19/vsa_virtual_filer/

Regards,

Mouhamad

VCP-DCV, VCP-DT, VCAP-DCD, VSP, VTSP
mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

I agree with Mouhamad.   It gives companies who could not previosuly afford shared storage a means of having shared storage and thus utilizing some of the advanced features of  vSphere

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wdroush1
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

We actually have a use for these actually.

What level is the VSA available to SMBs? We don't necessarily need HA at a company we work with, we can switch the failed VM on on a second ESXi box by hand, what I do need is continously replicated storage between two ESXi hosts.

Can we do this with bare essentials? If so, sold.

Essentials plus would be a little bit of a hard sell for this though.

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mcowger
Immortal
Immortal

The VSA works with all levels of vSphere 5, but it *IS* a separate license.

Its not a 'replication' mechanism, but a shared storage mechanism that makes a host's local storage appear as shared (using some clever internal replication).

Basically, you install it on up to 3 hosts, and all 3 hosts can see 1 set of shared storage to use with HA, DRS, vMotion, etc.

--Matt VCDX #52 blog.cowger.us
wdroush1
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Matt wrote:

The VSA works with all levels of vSphere 5, but it *IS* a separate license.

Its not a 'replication' mechanism, but a shared storage mechanism that makes a host's local storage appear as shared (using some clever internal replication).

Basically, you install it on up to 3 hosts, and all 3 hosts can see 1 set of shared storage to use with HA, DRS, vMotion, etc.

I haven't seen anything on this, what is the price like?

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mcowger
Immortal
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Pricing questions would have to go to your VMware rep.  As a partner's employee (EMC) we aren't supposed to discuss it (because every company has their own pricing models, etc).

--Matt VCDX #52 blog.cowger.us
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wdroush1
Hot Shot
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Troy Clavell wrote:

http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vsphere/vsphere-storage-appliance/overview....

Thanks, seems like the VSA is kind of out of reach for one of our smaller projects (Requiring essentials plus out of the box makes it a bit expensive being as we're virtualizing only a handful of servers), and the fact that we can't start with one, and add on another VSA a few months down the road.


Hopefully they'll have those features in a future VSA release. Smiley Sad That would really be invaluable to very small setups that want to get their feet wet and don't care about hot high availability and want a cold boot system they can crank by hand and save some money on.

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Josh26
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I really do anticipate a whole flood of "VSA doesn't perform as good as my SAN" type posts here when vSphere 5 comes out Smiley Sad

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wdroush1
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Josh26 wrote:

I really do anticipate a whole flood of "VSA doesn't perform as good as my SAN" type posts here when vSphere 5 comes out Smiley Sad

In other news: The sky is blue, and vSphere 5 licensing still sucks.

The whining should be inversely proportional to how cheap it is.

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nava_thulasi39

Hi,

Maximum 3 hosts, Essential plus license!! And license cost is heavier than expected.

Hmm,  nothing makes impressive. Smiley Happy

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wdroush1
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nava_thulasi39 wrote:

Hi,

Maximum 3 hosts, Essential plus license!! And license cost is heavier than expected.

Hmm,  nothing makes impressive. Smiley Happy

Yeah, at the price I can get entry level SAN systems. Smiley Sad

On top of that version 1.0 has so many limitations that it removes all flexibility the extra cost could justifty.

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