Installing Platform Services Controller and vCenter on same box but one at a time

[timHorton]

Installing a vCenter appliance.  Is installing the PSC and vCenter at the same time different that installing the PSC and then installing the vCenter later on the same ESXi host?

It may seem silly but I think the 2 different methods are different.

[daphnissov]

Not entirely sure what you're asking. If you deploy the vCSA with embedded PSC, it gets deployed as one VM at the same time. If you deploy an external PSC, you must deploy the PSC first followed by the vCenter. If you're asking if you can deploy the external PSC and then deploy vCenter an hour, a day, whatever later, then yes, that's possible.

[timHorton]

yes it is possible.

Is there a difference when it comes to the installation end state?

[daphnissov]

If you're asking about the latter, then no, not in my experience, but then again why would you wait days, weeks, or years between installing your PSC and installing the vCenter to which it gets connected? What's the use case there?

[timHorton]

The case is that I have been asked to do it that way and verify the process so I need to know if there is a difference.

The difference could be traffic routing, processing.  As a black box it may look the same but is not. 

[daphnissov]

If you deploy a PSC which is not registered against anything else, none of those things should come into play.

[timHorton]

By registered do you mean registered with other vCenters?  Yes it could be.  So you are saying there is a difference or you don't know or?

[daphnissov]

Again, it's not entirely clear what precisely you're asking about doing, but it sounds like your question was "Can I deploy a new PSC, let it sit around untouched, then at N point in the future use it somehow?" If that's not what you're asking, please clarify.

I'm stating that if you deploy a PSC and never use it (i.e., let it sit around untouched) and then at some as-yet-to-be-determined point in the future "use" it by either making it a replica, or simply connecting vCenter Server to it, there should be no problem doing so. The longest I have gone between deploying a PSC and not "using" it has only been a few hours, so if you want a definitive answer as to the feasibility of it being a useable entity for considerably longer, then you can either wait for others to chime in, open a SR with VMware, or test it yourself and wait however long you think you need in your scenario.

[timHorton]

Here is the question again:

Installing a vCenter appliance.  Is installing the PSC and vCenter at the same time different that installing the PSC and then installing the vCenter later on the same ESXi host?

I don't care if the vCenter is installed 10 minutes or a million minutes later.  It might be.

What I care about is if there are any internal differences in file system or internal/external processes etc that will make it work internally or externally slightly different.

[daphnissov]

And here's my answer again:

I'm stating that if you deploy a PSC and never use it (i.e., let it sit around untouched) and then at some as-yet-to-be-determined point in the future "use" it by either making it a replica, or simply connecting vCenter Server to it, there should be no problem doing so.

If you want to test a million minutes you're just going to have to wait the nearly two years to see, because since this is such an uncommon thing to do.

[timHorton]

Does not answer my question but thanks.