The fifth element is tenant management and control. In every shared vCenter Server model there are elements of control that the service provider will delegate to the tenant. Reasons for delegation of control include convenience, new revenue opportunities, security, compliance, or tenant requirement. In all cases, the goal of the shared vCenter Server model is to allow for and simplify the management, visibility, and reporting of this delegation.

Tenants must only have control over relevant portions of their service. Specifically, tenants must be able to provision allocated resources, manage the state of all virtualized objects, and view resource status and performance metrics for all parts of their infrastructure. In addition, where possible through third-party plug-ins into vCenter Server, tenants taking advantage of data protection or data backup services must be able to manage this capability on their own, including setting schedules and backup types, initiating jobs, and running reports.

This tenant-in-control model allows tenants to dynamically change the environment to suit their workloads as resource requirements change within the constructs defined by the service provider.