FAQ for VMware vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) 5.5
Article ID: 339686
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
This article provides answers to frequently asked questions about VMware vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) 5.5.
Environment
Resolution
A. In VSA, you can create a 2 or 3 node cluster, but once created you cannot add or delete a node. For more information, see Unable to add or remove VMware Virtual Storage Appliance nodes/members after installation (2001340).
Q. Can VSA be installed on a non-English vCenter Server?
A. Yes. VSA 1.0 supports i18N level 0 and, therefore, the English version of the VSA can be installed on non-English operating systems.
Q. Can the ESXi hosts running VSA have more than 4 NICs?
A. Yes, but they will not be used for VSA traffic by default. For more information, see Best practices for vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) Networking (2007363).
Q. Can a crossover cable connection be used between the VSA back end interfaces?
A. No, this is an untested configuration and therefore not supported. The design of the standard VSA deployment would not be compatible with this network topology.
Q. When is the VSA Cluster Service needed?
A. The VSA Cluster Service is always installed on the vCenter Server machine, with the VSA Manager software.
In a three-node cluster, the VSA Cluster Service is not configured and does not participate in the cluster.
In a two-node VSA cluster, the service participates in the cluster to establish a quorum. This can be the existing service if vCenter Server is on the same network as the VSA cluster front-end network. If vCenter Server is remote, a separate cluster service must be installed on 64-bit hardware.
Q. Can the VSA NFS datastores be mounted on additional ESX hosts? How is this done?
A. Add the host to the VSA data center. Every ten minutes, a process runs to check for new hosts and mounts the datastores automatically.
Q. How do I know if my hardware supports VSA?
A. For a list of all hardware qualified to run VSA, see the VMware Compatibility Guide and select VSA from the features list for the IO Devices.
Q. What is the default username and password for console access to the VSA nodes?
A. The username is svaadmin. The default password is svapass. The Linux passwd command must not be used to change this password. The VSA Manager is the proper method, so that the password change is kept consistent between the VSA nodes and the VSA database. After gaining access as svaadmin, root access can be gained using the sudo su - command.
Q. Must vCenter Server be updated to version 5.5 to use VSA 5.5?
A. No, VSA 5.5 is compatible with vCenter Server 5.1 and 5.0 update 3.
Q: Does VSA support virtual machines running in an FT (Fault Tolerant) configuration?
A. Yes. FT virtual machines can run on VSA datastores. It is best to run the FT virtual machine on a different ESXi host than the underlying VSA node. During VSA failover and recovery, I/O requests from a virtual machine using a VSA datastore may be briefly suspended.
Q: Is VSA compatible with SRM?
A. Yes, but there is no SRA and, therefore, there is no array-based replication and only vSphere Replication.
Q: Is VSA compatible with VMware Horizon View?
A. Yes, VSA is just an NFS storage and is compatible with Horizon View.
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