vSphere 6.0 blog – vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)

As many of you know i have been using the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) in my home lab for years now and in some customer (both production & test) environments as well. It doesn’t require a Windows installation since it is just a virtual appliance (VA) and deployed as a ova or ovf. However, the deployment has been changed now…
The VCSA also includes the vCenter Server Simulator which makes life really simple when you need to test e.g. some scripts and don’t have access to a live vSphere setup including e.g. the ESXi hosts.

There has always been a gap in scalability between the Windows based vCenter Server version and the VCSA but now in vSphere 6.0 the VCSA can scale the same way as the Windows based vCenter Server:

Additional facts

• • Does not come as a ova or ofv anymore. It’s a ISO based installation that uses a browser to complete the installation. Click the .exe file and this is what you’ll see:
    
    These are the options you get:
    
• VMware Data Protection (VDP) can be used for backup and recovery.
• The following virtual hardware requirements applies to the different deployments
  

  Deployment type	# Hosts	# VMs	VCSA vCPU	VCSA RAM (GB)
  Tiny	20	400	2	8
  Small	150	3 000	4	16
  Medium	300	6 000	8	24
  Large	1 000	10 000	16	32

• Different deployment options possible during the guided installer such as:
  • Install vCenter Server
  • Install Platform Services Controller
  • Install vCenter Server with an Embedded Platform Controller (default)
• Enhanced Linked Mode support

Missing features

There are still a few things we are missing in the VCSA:

• MSSQL Support. I know a lot of customers want that. However, now when VDP is supported as a backup method that might be good enough.
• Option to cluster the VCSA but the new FT feature or VDP support might be good enough.
• vSphere Update Manager.