vCenter Server Virtual or Physical

[jeffoutwest]

While weighing the pros and cons of placing a vCenter server on a physical or virtual platform, the following design was proposed:

Build a stand-alone ESXi server and then install a virtual vCenter server on the standalone hypervisor. The stand-alone ESXi host would only use local storage. This way the managment server is outside of the virtual environment but has some portability and DR capabilities. Anyone see any potential problems with this approach?

Thanks, -Jeff

[krowczynski · Accepted solution]

HI,

there are no problems to put it in a vm.

Gave the server 2GB Ram and 2vcpu and everything will be fine.

MCP, VCP

[hstagner]

Hello jeffoutwest,

I have been placing vCenter on a VM for a number of years in small, medium, and large environments. You should have no problems as long as you follow the guidelines for sizing your VM as others have suggested. Also, 2 vCPU and 2GB of RAM is the recommendation for up to 50 hosts and just vCenter. If you run SQL on the same VM (not best practice, but fine for smaller environments) you need to size the VM accordingly.

I hope this helps.

Don't forget to mark this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you found it useful (you'll get points too).

Regards,

Harley Stagner

VCP3, VCP4

[Troy_Clavell]

my thoughts are if you are going to build a standalone ESXi Host, just use that hardware for a vCenter Server instead. The huge benefits of vCenter as a VM is that you get HA/DRS

Spend the time/money putting together a solid DB environment. After all, the DB of vCenter, in my opinion, is still the most important part of vCenter.

If you want a little redundancy, you can take a look at VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat

[dnetz]

I agree with Troy, the only downside I've found with vCenter as a VM is that when the shit hits the fan and you lose storage then you're blind if you don't have a proper plan to deal with it. I have disabled DRS on the vCenter VM so I know where to find it and I have written instructions to follow to do a complete bootstrap, even when both vCenter and the SQL database is down. I'd also avoid relying on Active Directory for running the services if you only have virtual domain controllers.

Hope it helps!