VMware vSphere Storage Appliance* Installation - Intel® Server Board S5500WB

VMware vSphere Storage Appliance* (VSA*) is a VMware virtual appliance that packages SUSE Linux Enterprise Server* 11 and storage clustering services. A VSA virtual machine runs on several ESXi* hosts to abstract the storage resources that are installed on the hosts and to create a vSphere Storage Appliance cluster (VSA cluster). A VSA cluster leverages the computing and storage resources of several ESXi hosts and provides a set of datastores that are accessible by all hosts within the datacenter.

Set it up in Just Five Clicks

Before vSphere Storage Appliance, implementing virtualization required specialized knowledge in shared storage hardware. For example, a SAN configuration may require an FC Switch, a Server HBA, FC cables, and an external RAID Storage hardware. But with VSA, installation involves just a few mouse clicks and entering the desired IP address. And because VSA is integrated with vCenter Server, you can manage your entire IT environment in one place.

Get High availability Without Shared Storage Hardware

vSphere Storage Appliance runs on multiple servers simultaneously, so you can have the confidence that data is available to any of your workloads, even when a server fails. With vSphere’s availability features, you can restart snapshots of virtual machines automatically when a server fails, or use fault tolerant protection so applications run uninterrupted. Finally, perform maintenance with zero impact to the end user by migrating applications live from one server to another using vMotion.

The Intel® Server Board S5500WB offers top performance for dense computing environments. When total cost of ownership is paramount, the Intel® Server Board S5500WB offers a design optimized for efficiency, targeting Internet portal data centers, cloud computing, and high performance computing (HPC) applications. Featuring Intel’s next generation of Intel® Xeon® processor, the 5600 series, and policy-based power management via Intel® Intelligent Power Node Manager, the Intel Server Board S5500WB incorporates state of the art remote management, power and cooling optimizations to meet demanding data center requirements.