Overview of the virtual appliance for VSC, VASA Provider, and SRA : Architecture of the virtual appliance for VSC, VASA Provider, and SRA


Architecture of the virtual appliance for VSC, VASA Provider, and SRA
The architecture of the virtual appliance for Virtual Storage Console (VSC), VASA Provider, and Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) involves the storage system running ONTAP, the vCenter Server, the VMware vSphere Web Client, and the ESXi hosts.
The virtual appliance for VSC, VASA Provider, and SRA uses VMware-recommended, web-based architecture. The virtual appliance consists of two major components:
A graphical user interface (GUI) web application that is displayed as a plug-in within the vSphere Web Client to provide a single management console for virtual environments
You can use the VMware vSphere Web Client to access VSC. Each VSC instance and VASA Provider instance must be registered with only one vCenter Server instance. Each SRA instance must be registered with Site Recovery Manager (SRM), which must be registered with vCenter Server.
The vSphere Web Client and any plug-in applications that are deployed in the vCenter Server use the HTTPS protocol to communicate with each other.
The vCenter Server instance communicates with the physical servers where the ESXi hosts are running. You can have multiple virtual machines running on the ESXi hosts. Each virtual machine can run an operating system and applications. The ESXi hosts then communicate with the storage systems. You can use the virtual appliance for VSC, VASA Provider, and SRA to enable the VASA Provider extension and the SRA extension. If you want to configure virtual volumes (VVols), then you must enable the VASA Provider extension. If you want to configure disaster recovery for your vCenter Server environment, you must enable the SRA extension. While configuring the disaster recovery setup, you must install the SRA plug-in on the SRM instance that is installed in your vCenter Server. Depending on what tasks you want to perform, you can enable or disable the required extensions by using the interface of the virtual appliance for VSC, VASA Provider, and SRA.
Parent topic: Overview of the virtual appliance for VSC, VASA Provider, and SRA