vCenter running on the VSA ClusterĪnother popular feature request was to allow vCenter server to run as a VM on the VSA cluster, something that wasn’t possible in VSA 1.0. VMware will support 150 VSA clusters being managed from a single vCenter server. Allow vCenter to reside on a different network subnet to the VSA clusterīoth of these features are now in VSA 5.1.Allow a single vCenter instance to manage multiple VSA clusters.There have been many requests to enable VSA for ROBO (Remote Office/Branch Office) solutions. This is the most sought after feature of the VSA 5.1 release.
It allows the VSA shared storage to be increased in size after deployment, as long as there is enough free local storage on all nodes to grow. There is a new UI enhancement in VSA 5.1 to address this. VSA 5.1 supports the online growing of storage capacity. In VSA 1.0, the cluster storage capacity cannot be resized after deployment. This gives a maximum number of 2TB (or less) physical disks per host of 28. An additional 16 disks can now be supported in an expansion chassis attached to an ESXi host. One other major enhancement is the support for JBODs (Just a Bunch Of Disks) or disk expansion chassis. 12 disks can now be supported internally in an ESXi host. The number of 2TB (or less) disks per host has also been increased. In VSA 5.1, we will be increasing the number of disks per ESXi host 8 x 3TB disk drives. In VSA 1.0, each ESXi host could have only 4 x 3TB disk drives. Support for additional disk drives & Expansion CHASSIS This has already been relaxed and RAID5 & RAID6 are now also supported configurations. Initially, VSA v1.0 required a RAID10 configuration on the local storage of each of the ESXi hosts participating in the VSA cluster. The first is to enhance the VSA for the SMB/SME markets the second is to move into adjacent markets such as ROBO.īefore we start, I want to make a clarification around the required RAID configuration. The major enhancements to VSA v5.1 are two fold.
This post is to highlight the new features of the recently announced vSphere Storage Appliance version 5.1.