Summary

vCenter is a tool for the centralized management of the vSphere suite. It allows the management of multiple ESX/ESXi servers and VMs through a single-console application.

The VMware software stack consists of three layers: virtualization, management, and interface layers.

vCenter Server comes in two editions: Standard and Foundation. Foundation is designed for small- and middle-sized environments and is able to manage up to three hosts. Standard edition is for large vSphere deployments.

vCenter deployment consists of the following tasks:

Before starting vCenter deployment, you need to make sure that all prerequisites and requirements are met.

There are two approaches to the deployment of vCenter Server: it can be deployed on a virtual server or on a physical server.

Virtual machines are easier to manage; so, in other words, you get all the advantages related to virtualization while deploying vCenter on a virtual server.

On the other hand, running virtualized vCenter has certain concerns.

A Linked Mode group is a group of vCenter servers. It allows administrators to connect to one of them and manage inventories from all vCenter Servers in the group.