VMware vCenter Server - Physical vs. Virtual

This post is coming straight out of discussions I had with a client about, "How a vCenter Server should be deployed?". Since vCenter manages a virtual infrastructure you can either install it on a physical x86 server or as a Virtual Machine.

vCenter is an important machine and I have written about the importance of Protecting the VMware vCenter Server in one of my articles - Providing Protection & High Availability to a VMware vCenter Server. I would recommend you read this in order to understand the importance of taking the decision of keeping your vCenter Physical or Virtual.

People often ask me this question not only for vCenter but for all the other applications which they want to Virtualize. My answer to them is usually this "PLEASE ASK THE APPLICATION VENDOR". The team and the organization who have developed the application know the best about the attributes of the application hence they should be able to tell you whether an application can be virtualized or not.

vCenter being a VMware application, let's see what VMware has to say about Virtualizing the vCenter Server. As per page number 2 on the following white paper, VMware says - "Users can run vCenter Server in a virtual machine or on a physical server. We recommend running vCenter inside a virtual machine."

Sweeeett.. I believe the recommendation is exactly inline with my thought process... If you cannot Virtualize your own application (the vCenter Server) which is CRITICAL for a Virtual Infrastructure, you cannot really ask the application owners to Virtualize their critical apps on the VMware vSphere platform... Hence this is a great point which IT today can take to their application owners and convince them to Virtualize whatever fits on a VMware virtual machine today (I guess everything with vSphere 5.1. Read What's New - 5.1 to know more...)

Great, apart from the story of "Eating your own Dogfood", let's look at some other reasons which would help us take this decision around virtualizing vCenter or NOT.....

Well the above points are just a snapshot of what I think and I believe these pointers give you good enough reasons to decide whether your vCenter should be Virtual or Physical. 

I remember someone asking me a question which was "What will happen if the Virtual Machine which is running the vCenter goes down due to an ESXi server failure??"

The answer is that VMware HA will still work since it does not require vCenter to be up and running.. So if you have a HA cluster, you can be sure that you will get back the control on your environment as soon as the vCenter Virtual Machine is up on any other host in the cluster with the help of HA. 

What will happen if your PHYSICAL vCenter Server goes down??? I will leave you with this thought for now... :-)

Yup, Virtual is Better for me....

Hope this helps you take a decision on what is best for your environment..... Do share your thoughts if any!!

Choosing the Platform for your Virtual Center. vCenter Server Appliance(vCSA-Linux) vs vCenter (Windows)!!

With the release of vSphere 5.0 in 2011, VMware just increased the options for its customers to chose between the traditional vCenter Server which was installed on a 64 bit Windows OS and the freshly baked, Linux Based - vCSA (vCenter Server Appliance).

Though the intention behind this does not look like going away from Microsoft dependency :-) for vCenter. I hear this a lot from a lot of people, however VMware's decision of a Linux based vCenter is more from a customer demand perspective. Customers who are not Windows Centric or in other words are Linux based shops would not want to install a Windows Based Application in there environment as this would increase the cost of acquiring Windows Licenses and most importantly a resource to manage this Windows server.

With this, let's quickly have a look at both the platforms and see which one is the best!!

I would say this is not a fight between which is a better platform, however the decision between selecting the platform depends upon what suits your environment the best.

I hope this will help you take a decision around which option is better suited for your environment.

I would recommend you go through my other articles about vCenter Server which would help you take important decisions around this application which provides you centralized controls and management of your VMware Virtual Infrastructure.

VMware vCenter Server - Physical vs. Virtual

Providing Protection & High Availability to a VMware vCenter Server

Share your thoughts, use the comment option to open  and discussion points.