EMC VNX and Celerra Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) – Free Download Link

Fancy running a virtualized EMC VNX or Celerra instance in your own lab?  Well, good news this is totally possible and for free (*small print: Doesn’t include lab hardware and batteries not included). I’ve run a couple of webinar sessions over the past 18 months on setting up and running the EMC VNX and Celerra virtual storage appliance (VSA), and still regularly have people ask how they get their hands on a copy of these free to use VSAs.  There are a handful of EMC VNX and Celerra VSA download links out on the web though many of these no longer work, so I decided to put this post together with the latest working download links.  Check out the ‘Useful Links’ section at the bottom of this post for a copy of my webinar slide decks (pdf).

Before you start downloading your own copy of the EMC VNX or Celerra VSA you should be aware of the following points:

• It’s FREE to download and use.
• Great for learning or up-skilling yourself with EMC VNX and/or Celerra storage including Unisphere web based management interface.
• It acts and behaves like a real EMC VNX or Celerra in almost all areas.   Once again, great for educational purposes.
• You can present the EMC VSAs out as working shared storage onto which you can run VMs or storage files.
• Both the EMC VNX & Celerra VSA come bundled with EMC Unisphere web based management – nice, slick easy to use web GUI interface.
• It doesn’t come with any official EMC support, though if you head on over to the “Everything VMware at EMC” Community Forums there are some great folks that may be able to help you.
• It’s only intended for use in a lab environment (ie: non-production), as such don’t expect blistering fast speeds from it though it is good enough to run some VMs and learn how to configure and manage the storage.
• The EMC VSI plugin for VMware vCenter Server works with it – did I mention that this is also free to download and use?  Head on over to EMC Powerlink to find the latest version of the VSI plugin.
• EMC VNX VSA = NFS Only.
• EMC Celerra  = NFS & iSCSI.

Download Links Here

If you are deciding on what VSA (EMC VNX or Celerra) to download and use, I would recommend the VNX VSA as the physical version is the latest Unified Storage offering from EMC – better to invest your time in learning the more recent version in my opinion.

So here they are folks, the download links – have fun and enjoy!

EMC VNX VSA

OVA:  UBER_VNX(NFS)v1.ova

EMC Celerra VSA

OVA:  Celerra VSA 6.0.36.4 – UBERv3.2.ova

Easy to remember location for VSA downloads

For easy future reference I have also added links to both these EMC VSA downloads in the ‘Cool Links’ section which can be accessed via the menu bar at the top of the page.

Latest VNX File VSA Versions

Via the EMC’s Powerlink portal you are able to download the latest versions of the VNX VSA, though I appreciate that not everyone has access to this and for many the UBER Version of the VNX and Celerra VSAs (download links above) will meet their requirements for use in their lab environment.  That said, if you do have access then why not download and play around with the latest. 

Useful Links

• Slide Deck: Install & Run the EMC VNX Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA)
• Slide Deck:  Install & Run the EMC Celerra Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA)
• Running your own EMC Celerra ‘Uber’ Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) in your vSphere Lab – Part 1
• Installing the EMC Celerra UBER VSA in your VMware vSphere Lab – Part 2
• Celerra Virtual Appliance HOWTO 101 – Basic Setup and Configuration (Virtual Geek)
• EMC UBER VNX VSA – More information & Download (Nickapedia)
• EMC Celerra VSA – More information & Download (Nickapedia)