Newer vSAN design built for NVMe, with one tier and storage pools rather than disk groups. OSA is the older design, using two tiers.
Also called vSAN Express Storage Architecture.
Read more: Broadcom TechDocs
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains vSAN ESA in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- vSAN
VMware's software-defined storage, which combines local devices across a cluster's ESX hosts into one shared datastore. Available as OSA or ESA, VCF can use it as principal storage.
- NVMe
Flash Optimized Azure Managed Redis keeps keys and hot values in memory while moving colder values, roughly 80 percent of capacity, onto this high-speed flash storage.
- Archive
Offline access tier for blobs, cheapest to store yet dearest to access. Reading a blob means rehydrating it first, which can take as long as 15 hours.
- General-purpose v1
The older storage account kind (
Storage), which lacks access tiers, Archive and premium file shares and retires on 13 October 2026. Converting to ZRS requires first upgrading to GPv2, a one-way change.
Related terms
- Auto-policy management
A setting on vSAN ESA clusters that builds and applies a default storage policy specific to the cluster, picking the best fault tolerance for its size and type. vSAN OSA clusters do not offer it.
- principal storage
Fixed at cluster creation and impossible to switch later: vSAN (ESA or OSA), VMFS over FC, or NFS v3. Supplemental storage, by contrast, can be added afterwards.
- SATA
A local disk interface, usually slower than NVMe or SAS. vSAN ESA cannot use it since that architecture requires NVMe.