vCSA is prepackaged and preinstalled Photon Linux-based VM that provides vCenter and PSC services. As compared with old versions, vCSA now offers the same capabilities provided by the Windows-based version plus some exclusive services, such as native HA, native backup and restore, a migration tool, and improved appliance management.

With vSphere 6.7 you can run the vCSA GUI and CLI installers on Microsoft Windows 2012 x64 bit, Microsoft Windows 2012 R2 x64 bit, Microsoft Windows 2016 x64 bit, and macOS Sierra. The new capabilities make the appliance complete and ready to take over the Windows-based version.

The following is a short description of features available in vSphere 6.7:

• Native HA: This feature, available for vCSA only, is a solution to provide HA to your vCenter. You could have the active vCSA in one data center and the passive vCSA located in a DR or secondary data center. It removes the dependency on expensive third-party database clustering solutions of RDMs.
• VUM: This is now embedded into vCSA. You no longer need a separate Windows VM and an additional license.
• HTML5 interface: You no longer need to use the old Flex client. In vCenter 6.7, almost 95% of features are fully integrated into the new HTML5 client. VMware promises that all features will be available in vCenter 6.7U1, which should be available in Q4 2018.
• Native backup and restore: The process has been simplified with a new native file-based solution. It restores the vCenter Server configuration to a new appliance and streams backups to external storage using HTTP, FTP, or SCP protocols (vCSA only).

The installation procedure has been simplified, and now vCSA, and PSC installation is a two-stage process:

• Stage 1: Deploying OVF
• Stage 2: Configuration

This is a significant enhancement and provides not only better validation checks, but also you can take a snapshot between stages for rollback. Besides, you can create a template for additional deployments.

Introduced with vSphere 6.0 Update 1, the Appliance Management client (accessible at the address https://<VCSA_IP>:5480) simplified the configuration and upgrade process. Now you can patch or upgrade the appliance through ISO-or URL-based patching, simplifying the process and allowing you to save precious time.

vCSA updates can be applied directly from the VAMI using an intuitive GUI:

Please note that the update of vCSA is available only between minor versions, for example, from 6.7.0.10000 to 6.7.0.20000, not between major versions.

There are many more features of the management interface of vCSA, such as backup configuration, services overview, and storage consumption.