The Management Server Appliance (MSA) is a virtual appliance that runs as a plug-in to vCenter Server. It collects and maintains statistics relevant to the protection of the VMs in the cluster(s) managed through vCenter. It also provides administrative functions, such as selecting VMs for protection, etc. The MSA can be managed using the vSphere Web Client, and its functions can also be accessed directly via CLI or RESTful APIs.
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