In May 2016, Dell EMC unveiled its family of Unity midrange storage arrays and took the opportunity to offer a software version of its technology, known as UnityVSA. This virtual appliance for VMware vSphere ESXi software implements all the functions of the manufacturer's next-generation physical arrays.
Unity VSA gets its name from the bay operating system, which is an evolution of the OS Unity, first appeared in the VNXe arrays. Unity is the product of several years of development to converge two historic operating systems from EMC , the "DART" OS from the former NAS Celerra and the "FLARE" OS from the former Clariion SAN arrays. EMC. The variation used by the EMC Unity storage arrays was codenamed "Unity.Vnext" and is the result of this process.
The result is a software storage array that can provide both SAN and NAS data services. Like physical arrays, the Unity virtual appliance is managed using the new Unisphere HTML 5 console. As standard, Unity VSA integrates the FAST VP data tiering capabilities (for tiering between SSD and hard drives), thin provisioning, Snapshots (SAN and NAS) support, cloning and replication. Administration is done through the same Unisphere graphical console as physical Unity arrays.
Unity VSA is available in two versions. The first, called community, is free and has no support. For example, it can be used for training, evaluation, or in test and development scenarios. The other version, called professional, benefits from all the support services of EMC. The community version has a capacity cap of 4 TB, while the professional edition is available with capacities of 10, 25 and 50 TB.
Unity VSA gets its name from the bay operating system, which is an evolution of the OS Unity, first appeared in the VNXe arrays. Unity is the product of several years of development to converge two historic operating systems from EMC , the "DART" OS from the former NAS Celerra and the "FLARE" OS from the former Clariion SAN arrays. EMC. The variation used by the EMC Unity storage arrays was codenamed "Unity.Vnext" and is the result of this process.
Unity VSA is available in two versions. The first, called community, is free and has no support. For example, it can be used for training, evaluation, or in test and development scenarios. The other version, called professional, benefits from all the support services of EMC. The community version has a capacity cap of 4 TB, while the professional edition is available with capacities of 10, 25 and 50 TB.