Sunday, July 31, 2011

vSphere vCenter 5 Design Considerations


vCenter has become one of the most critical components of vSphere. Issues with vCenter can cause panic attacks because you feel that your VMs are at a risk, but be not afraid, plenty of barriers are built in. If you didn't know already, HA doesn't depend on vCenter once the hosts have been configured, heartbeats are sent and vCenter failing won't leave VMs unprotected. vMotion, DRS, and DPM on the other hand all do rely on vCenter. The focus of this blog article is to discuss installation strategies for all the VMware vCenter required components:

VMware vCenter
VMware Update Manager
VMware ESXi Dump Collector
VMware Syslog Collector
vSphere Web Client (Server)
Auto-Deploy
VMware vSphere Authentication Proxy


The goal of this exercise is to distribute the components of vCenter evenly across the board so each server isn't being hit to hard, at the same time reduce the number of guests needed.

vCenter has become one of the most critical components of vSphere. Issues with vCenter can cause panic attacks because you feel that your VMs are at a risk, but be not afraid, plenty of barriers are built in. If you didn't know already, HA doesn't depend on vCenter once the hosts have been configured, heartbeats are sent and vCenter failing won't leave VMs unprotected. vMotion, DRS, and DPM on the other hand all do rely on vCenter. The focus of this blog article is to discuss installation strategies for all the VMware vCenter required components:

VMware vCenter
VMware Update Manager
VMware ESXi Dump Collector
VMware Syslog Collector
vSphere Web Client (Server)
Auto-Deploy
VMware vSphere Authentication Proxy

The goal of this exercise is to distribute the components of vCenter evenly across the board so each server isn't being hit to hard, at the same time reduce the number of guests needed. 

option 1 (more consolidated):

Server 1 - The database:
Microsoft SQL

Server 2 - The core:

VMware vCenter
vCenter Orchastrator
VMware ESXi Dump Collector

Server 3 - The addons

VMware Syslog Collector
vSphere Web Client (server)
VMware Update Manager
Auto-Deploy
vSphere Authentication Proxy

Option 2 (more separated):

Server 1 - The database:
Microsoft SQL

Server 2 - The core:
VMware vCenter
vCenter Orchastrator
VMware ESXi Dump Collector

Server 3 - The addons
VMware Syslog Collector
VMware Update Manager
Auto-Deploy
vSphere Authentication Proxy

Server 4 (maybe DMZ):
vSphere Web Client (server)


Server 1 - The database:
Microsoft SQL

Server 2 - The core:

VMware vCenter
vCenter Orchastrator
VMware ESXi Dump Collector

Server 3 - The addons
VMware Syslog Collector
vSphere Web Client (server)
VMware Update Manager
Auto-Deploy
vSphere Authentication Proxy

Option 2 (more separated):
Server 1 - The database:
Microsoft SQL

Server 2 - The core:
VMware vCenter
vCenter Orchastrator
VMware ESXi Dump Collector

Server 3 - The addons
VMware Syslog Collector
VMware Update Manager
Auto-Deploy
vSphere Authentication Proxy

Server 4 (maybe DMZ):
vSphere Web Client (server)

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