vCenter Server Appliance – some basic information

This post is about the vCenter Server Appliance 5.0!  Click here for the vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 post

The vCenter Server Appliance (vSCA) is a great thing if you use it for a small environment. But there are some limitations you should know and take care of them. In this article you will find a short notice how to install the vSCA and a summary from the supported services and the limitations:

How to install the vCenter server appliance?

1.) download the binaries from vmware.com/support
2.) open your vSphere client and got to “File” – “Deploy OVF Template”
3.) select the path to the downloaded .OVA file
4.) enter a name for the virtual machine
5.) select a datastore and configure the network settings

Et voila – some minutes later you have access using the following link:
https://IP_from_your_vCSA:9443/vsphere-client

You can log on to your vSCA with the default user: root and password: vmware.

Which services are included in your vCenter Server Appliance?

Your vCSA is providing the following services:

• vSphere Web Client
• Syslog collector service
• ESXi dump collector service
• Autodeploy
• vCenter SSO (Single Sign on)

But what are the limitations from the vCSA?

If you take a look into the VMware vCenter Server Appliance documentation you will notice, that the vCSA can “only” support a maximum of five hosts/50 virtual machines with the embedded database (status as of vCSA 5.1.0 Update 1a).

But there are some limitations of the included services, too. One important thing missing is the vCenter Update Manager. If you need this great feature you will have to install it on a windows guest and register the plug-in in your vSphere client.

vCenter Converter Standalone is missing, too. If you need it, just install it on a windows VM.

Some other limitations are:

• no support for IPv6
• no support for Linked Mode (because of a dependency to Microsoft ADAM)
• no support for Microsoft SQL databases

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