Spotlight: new VSA feature for vSphere 5

If you’re a small business without (or with limited) shared storage, VMware is targeting a new feature in vSphere 5 directly at you: vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA).

They have a brief intro to the appliance online, and while they are aiming at a very specific audience for this first version, I think the appliance has potential beyond that.

If you have hosts that you originally purchased with ESX in mind, and have a good amount of local storage available because you intended to chew a bunch of it up on the service console, the VSA may be a way to recapture that lost investment even if you have “traditional” shared storage available (e.g, SAN or NAS).