Combine vCenter for VMs and vCenter for VMware View

[adrianych]

Hi, I have taken over the current set up by 2 different vendors. We have only 1 Dell Blade Chassis with the set up :

- 6 Dell blades running ESXi 5.1.0 1753533 on vCenter-DC (12 Std CPU license, running 12 CPUs)

- 2 Dell blades running ESXi 5.1.0 1753533 on vCenter-VDI (50 User licenses)

- The 2 vCenters are VMs running off 2 OS in "data center" controlled by vCenter-PRD

- Each Dell blade Server has 2 CPUs

Is there a way to combine the 2x VDI blades into vCenter-DC ?

That means to make it such that vCenter-DC will have 8 Dell Blades Running ESXi 5.1.0 ?

[Akopylov]

Hello, adrianych .

If I get you right, you have vSphere 5 Std license for 12 CPU on first vCenter and vSphere for Desktop license for 50 vm on second vCenter, so you could just add vSphere for Desktop license on your first vCenter even without deleting this license from second one (but it will violate VMware EULA, so it is better to delete the license from second vCenter). Further you could add 2 VDI hosts to first vCenter using the vSphere for Desktop key.

But whats the point? There is recommendation to keep separate vCenter for hosts that run VDI (if you use linked clone pools), look at Role of vCenter in VMware View Scalability | VMware End-User Computing Blog - VMware Blogs. So you current configuration with 2 vCenter is preferable.

[adrianych]

Hi Akopylov, you got my set up right.....

One of the main reasons is that I may want to consolidate the Blade Servers into Rack mounted 4 CPUs servers.

And the main consumption I have now is RAM, DC uses total of 400GB + VDI uses total of 220GB (4GB per desktop). '

The CPU usage for my DC hovers around 5% to may of 15% per ESXi host.

If I do a 1 to 1, Blade to Rack Mount conversion :

Option 1 : 6x 2 CPU servers for DC + 2x 2 CPU servers for 2 CPU servers for VDI

Option 2 : 3x 4 CPU servers for DC + 2x 2 CPU servers for 2 CPU servers for VDI

Option 3 : 4x 4 CPU servers for DC + VDI

Please note that I take the assumption that :

- Current server "socket" CPUs are more powerful than what I bought 5yrs ago

- Each Server "per socket" RAM is higher than the 36GB per socket (what was max 5yr ago). I think the 4 CPU servers nowadays can use like 1TB RAM as compared to my current max of 72GB RAM per 2 sockets.