For those of you interested in a low cost shared storage solution, VMware now have a vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA). The initial release (1.0) came out last year. This year, we announced version 5.1 with a bunch of new features.
To get you started on your evaluation of the VSA 5.1, a number of evaluation videos were put together. These videos are now available on youtube. The first evaluation video, which covers the VSA 5.1 installation, is here:
The next video looks at how to deploy VSA 5.1 in a ROBO (Remote Office, Branch Office) environment. VSA 5.1 now supports a single VSA manager on a single vCenter server managing up to 150 remote VSA deployments.
The third video in the series takes a look at the new online storage grow feature. This is also something new in VSA 5.1. Previously, you had to decide how much storage was needed by the VSA cluster up front; there was no way to increase it after deployment. In VSA 5.1, storage can now be grown after deployment.
Finally we take a look at the resilience features of the VSA and how it can continue to provide a full complement of shared storage even when one of the ESXi nodes hosting an appliance has a catastrophic failure.
I hope you find these videos useful. We’d love to get your opinion on whether or not you find these videos beneficial, so please leave comments. It will help us with collateral direction for future product launches.
For more details around the new VSA 5.1 features, check out this VSA 5.1 whitepaper.
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Excellent series of videos for those who are interested in pursuing VSA as an option in their environment. They really let someone wrap their head around the VSA concept for someone not familiar with this technology,
Excellent video collection. Within 20minute, overall enhancement of VSA 5.1 and generic concept of VSA is clear.
Thanks for the great videos! Do you know of there is an updated version of this whitepaper yet? http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VM-vSphere-Storage-Appliance-Deep-Dive-WP.pdf
Or even just a basic video describing the best practices and limitations of VSA 5.1?
Hi Jess – the 5.1 collateral can be found here – http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10324. There is no plan to do an updated deep dive just yet.
Yes i have seen that. I cant believe this is awesome.
I really appreciate this type of video series as they give me a good overview of what a new/enhanced product allows you to do. I want to keep up with VMware developments and this information allows me to do that. I wouldn’t have the time to get this from the product documentation. Thanks.