VMware vCenter Server and its supporting services are at the heart of the vSphere and vCloud platform. Within the vSphere infrastructure, vCenter Server is employed to provide the following functionality:

vCenter Server also provides monitoring and alerting capabilities for hosts and virtual machines. System administrators can create and apply alarms to all managed objects in vCenter Server. These alarms include:

vCenter Server 6.0 simplifies the planning and deployment from previous releases by offering only two deployment components:

All vCenter Server services, such as Inventory Service, Web Client, vSphere Auto Deploy, and so on are installed along with vCenter Server Manager. There are no longer separate installers for these components, simplifying the architecture by combining multiple functions onto a single server. One exception remains, vSphere Update Manager currently continues as a standalone Microsoft Windows installation.

The Platform Services Controller combines common services across the vSphere infrastructure such as single sign-on, licensing, and certificate management. The Platform Services Controller replicates information such as licenses, roles and permissions, and tags with other Platform Services Controllers. For further information on the configuration of these vCenter Server components, refer to the VMware vSphere 6 Documentation at https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-6-pubs.html.

While more and more host and virtual machine administration is being moved away from vCenter Server up the management stack to applications, such as vCloud Director, VMware vRealize Orchestrator™, VMware vRealize Automation, or VMware Horizon™ View™, vCenter Server remains central to ESXi host and virtual machine administration and this is unlikely to change anytime soon.