VSA Development Status

[eiskra]

Is there an ETA when we can expect VSA development to resume?

Am very interested in the VSA product for our VMware stack as a way to provision extra storage.

[anton (staff)]

We're gathering and analyzing our customers feedback.

What about VMware own VSA? What you don't like about it so much you want to use StarWind VSA instead of?

Is there an ETA when we can expect VSA development to resume?

Am very interested in the VSA product for our VMware stack as a way to provision extra storage.

[eiskra]

Limitations of VMware VSA:
1. High price for VSA as an add-on to Plus.
2. No two-server solution (two-node solution requires third server.)
3. No four-node solution
4. Three-node solution recommends four servers (installing VCenter with VSA management inside VMware requires unusual contortions.)
5. No flexibility on node-level redundancy (Mirror only, workload is not balanced.)
6. No flexibility on hardware-level redundancy (RAID 10 only, 5 and 6 not supported.)
7. No add-on ability for existing clusters (must be configured at ESX install time, cannot be added under vSphere 4.)
8. Limited feature set (no dedupe, for example)

I, for example, have an exsting 3-server cluster running vSphere 4 with a high-quality SAN.
I'd like to create a second virtual SAN using the ESX servers' local storage for use with low-priority servers/test lab and backups, as part of a tired storage scheme.
VSA's limitations are severe in my case. I pay a lot of money for a product which will is non-trivial to incrementally ad, which will present, raw, 1/4 of the storage I purchase, and which cannot dedupe.

[anton (staff)]

We'll fix it. We're working on Windows-based VSA for ESXi (Windows-based means you'll provide us with a Windows key or with a free Hyper-V or Server Core we'll use as a base operating system). Linux-based VSA will R.I.P.

[Arjantim]

That sounds good, when will the beta testing start?

[anton (staff)]

We'll roll out NAS Configurator with 5.9 beta so I think it's 6.0 beta (mid-Summer).

That sounds good, when will the beta testing start?

[anton (staff)]

V8 Beta with NAS Configurator and VSA/vSAN Builder is out. Give at a try.