vCenter Server Physical Design

As of vSphere 6.0, vCenter Server installation and configuration has been dramatically simplified. The vCenter specifications should be able to accommodate all the necessary vCenter Server services. The following section discusses the physical design of vCenter Server in the environment.

vCenter Server Sites and Locations

The VMware Integrated OpenStack infrastructure will be deployed with a single site. Within the site, there will be two firecells. Each firecell contains one (1) vCenter Server instance for the management, edge, and compute components.

Within each vCenter Server, there will be one (1) single data center object configured.

Backup and Restore

As of vSphere 6.0.0 GA, a simple backup and restore can only be used with deployments in which an embedded VMware Platform Services Controller™ is used and where enhanced linked mode is also not being used. This is because replication may not properly recover from stale data saved in the VM Directory Services database.

To see the options to back up an externally configured Platform Services Controller, including configurations which are utilizing enhanced linked mode, See the VMware KB article How to backup and restore vCenter Server 6.0 external deployment models (2110294) available at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2110294.

In addition, see the VMware KB article List of Recommended topologies for vSphere 6.0 (2108548) available at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2108548 for further details on the recommended topologies.

Platform Services Controller Deployment Recommendations

Platform Services Controller deployment can be a complex task depending on the size of the environment.

VMware recommends virtualizing all of the VMware vCenter® components because it allows for gaining all the benefits of using vSphere features such as VMware vSphere High Availability. The following recommendations are provided for virtualized systems. Physical systems will need to be protected appropriately.

The recommendations provided in the Virtualization Technical Materials module are as follows:

For sites that will not use enhanced linked mode, use an embedded Platform Services Controller.

This will provide more simplicity in the environment by including a single pane of glass view of all servers while reducing the administrative overhead of configuring the environment for availability.

High availability is provided by VMware HA. Failure domain is limited to a single vCenter Server, because there is no dependency on external component connectivity for Platform Services Controller connectivity.

vCenter Server Platform Choice

vSphere 6.0 offers a choice in vCenter Server platforms. vCenter Server can be deployed as either a Windows-based system or the Linux-based VMware vCenter Server Appliance™. vCenter Server 6.0 now supports the same maximum configurations on either platform, supporting environments with up to 1,000 hosts and 10,000 powered-on virtual machines.

vCenter Server Resource Requirements

This section describes the resource requirements for the vCenter Server proposed for the vSphere infrastructure design. The vCenter specifications should be able to accommodate both vCenter Server services and Platform Services Controller services, if they are on the same server.

vCenter Server Virtual Appliance

For virtual appliance requirements, see the vCenter Server Appliance Requirements section of the vSphere Installation and Setup guide (http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-60/index.jsp#com.vmware.vsphere.install.doc/GUID-752FCA83-1A9B-499E-9C65-D5625351C0B5.html).

Table 13. vCenter Server Appliance Logical Specifications for Management/Edge/Compute Clusters

Attribute	Specification
vCenter Server version	6.0
Physical or virtual system	Virtual
Number of CPUs	4
Memory	16 GB
Number of NIC and ports	1/1
Number of disks and disk sizes	1 disk - 86 GB to 295 GB
Operating system and SP level	VMware Appliance

vCenter Server Database Design

VMware best practice is to use an existing database server if one is available. VMware recommends that any database being used for the vCenter Server be installed in a virtual machine to gain the benefits of virtualization. The following provide highlights of database configuration details:

When using the vCenter Server’s installed embedded database:

- vCenter Server for Windows now uses an embedded vFabric Postgres database in vSphere 6.0. In this release, this database is suitable for an environment of a maximum of 5 ESXi hosts and 50 virtual machines.
- The vCenter Server Appliance comes bundled with a vFabric Postgres database that supports the maximum vCenter configuration of 1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machines.

When vCenter Server is installed using an external database:

vCenter Server for Windows supports Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server databases.

vCenter Server Appliance supports only Oracle databases.

To avoid performance, management, and support problems, install all recommended database patches that VMware requires.

Hardware requirements. See the database vendor documentation for hardware requirements and recommendations.

IP address. Configure a static IP address and host name to avoid outages in the connection to the vCenter Server instance.

For either physical or virtual vCenter Server instances, separation of vCenter Server and its database removes any possibility of resource contention between the two. If vCenter Server and the database system are virtualized, separation means that either virtual machine can be easily resized to accommodate current performance needs.

The following table lists the specifications for the vCenter Server database at <Customer>.

Table 14. vCenter Server Database Design

Attribute	Specification
Vendor and version	Embedded Postgres
Authentication method	Built-In
Recovery method	N/A
Database auto growth	N/A
Transaction log auto growth	N/A