Is it ok to use an existing VCenter server for VDI management or best to stand up a seperate server?

[ansabin]

I'm currently managing my ESX servers (and virtual servers) with VCenter. I'm preparing to roll out VDI to virtualize my ~260 desktop computers. Is it ok to run VDI on the same Vcenter as I'm using for my virtual servers or should I stand up a new VCenter specificially for VDI?

[Troy_Clavell]

you should be fine, but if you plan to go past 1000 VM's I would suggest a separate instance.

[patten_aaron]

Troy is right, you shouldn't have any issues adding the desktops to your vCenter server. As an aside, if you are using View Manager as the broker then you will not be able to upgrade to vSphere until View 4 GAs in November.

~Aaron Patten

Please award points for helpful answers. I got kids to feed

[JohnVUB]

Working fine on my setup alright

[Lee_Collison]

To clarify what Aaron is stating - View is not supported on vSphere 4.0 by VMware support. You can provision thick desktops but you can not provision linked clones using View 3.x.x and ESX 4. View 4.x is supposed to be released this quarter if all goes right.

[hmartin]

I agree that it's OK, however, be aware that some changes to your vCenter server can have a very negative impact on View Composer (I'm assuming you're installing the View Composer service). Our vCenter server is a physical server and when we lease-replaced the physical server and moved vCenter to the new server, it completely broke View administration. Existing virtual desktops were unaffected, but we could not perform any administration on them. It took VMware support about 3 weeks to come up with a solution, which was to permanently "cripple" the existing pools (none of the existing virtual desktops utilize View Composer). Therefore, we created new pools and created new virtual desktops in the new pools. The users with VMs in the "crippled" pools were not affected, but we cannot recompose those VMs.

Since there's absolutely no documentation regarding the DOs and Don'ts of vCenter server changes, I would check with VMware Support before making any significant changes to it.