11.1 vCenter Server Appliance
The vCenter Server Appliance was new in vSphere 5 and is built on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11. Significant advancements were made in the 5.1 and 5.5 releases, but the 6.0 release has few limitations, with the vCenter Server Appliance now having the same scalability as the Windows-installable vCenter Server.
This scalability is supported with the embedded PostgreSQL database or with an external Oracle database. This enables service providers to choose the platform that best suits their specific use cases, without sacrificing vCenter Server performance or scalability.
Table 25. vCenter Server Installable Windows and Appliance Scalability
Metric | Windows vCenter Server | vCenter Server Appliance (Embedded VMware vFabric Postgres) |
ESXi hosts per vCenter Server | 1000 | 1000 |
Powered on VMs per vCenter Server | 10,000 | 10,000 |
Hosts per cluster | 64 | 64 |
Virtual machines per cluster | 6,000 | 6,000 |
Linked mode | 10 vCenter Server instances | 10 vCenter Server Appliance instances |
IP v6 support | Yes | Yes |
Site Recovery Manager support | Yes | Yes |
vSphere PowerCLI support | Yes | Yes |
So that host resources are not wasted, the vCenter Server Appliance can be deployed in one of four scalable options. The following table outlines the different size options available during the initial deployment, which can easily be modified post deployment, if required.
Table 26. vCenter Server Appliance Deployment Scalability Options
Size | vCPU | vRAM (GB) | Hosts (Max) | VMs (Max) |
Tiny | 2 | 8 | 20 | 400 |
Small | 4 | 16 | 150 | 3,000 |
Medium | 8 | 24 | 300 | 6,000 |
Large | 16 | 32 | 1,000 | 10,000 |
Now that the vCenter Server Appliance is a viable option for most deployment use cases and is, in most respects, equivalent to the Windows-installable option in terms of functionality and scalability, service providers must understand its advantages and drawbacks when choosing to employ it.
Table 27. vCenter Server Appliance Compared with Installable Windows vCenter Server
Advantages to the vCenter Server Appliance (vSphere 6.0) | Drawbacks to the vCenter Server Appliance (vSphere 6.0) |
Do not need a windows license. Do not need an SQL license. Easy to deploy and easy to upgrade (built-in update function). | It is not possible to install VMware Update Manager (you must install it on a Windows virtual machine and then a Windows license is required). Plug-in support for third-party software might not be available. The only option for external database support is Oracle. |
