VC installed on ESXi. Should it not be installed as Hypervisor ?

[Homdax]

Let me get this clear.

I have an ESXi that I keep updated and when I got a VMUG license I - after much pondering - installed VC on top of that as a VM. To manage a lot of what I already manage in ESXi, but with additional functionality...

But, and here is what keeps me awake at night, should not the vCenter be installed standalone?

Why do I install VC - following recommendations - as a Virtual OS to manage an ESXi Hypervisor that host the same VC? It makes no sense. It's a logical fallacy.  

Would I not be better off wiping everything on that machine and install VCenter from a USB stick directly bare-metal? And skip ESXi all together handling my vmachines only from VC? Does VC have a dependency on ESXi as bare-metal hypervisor that disallows that?

[DurhamNeil]

The concept seems funny at first, but if your main job is to provide as resilient a platform as possible for virtual compute resources, and you achieve that, ...why would you place an important vm outside of it? Our organization for example has approximately £1 million of Nutanix hardware running ESXi as the hypervisor. The whole thing is bullet proof. Why would I risk vCenter being on much less resiliant hardware outside of the main production clusters?

[scott28tt · Accepted solution]

You have to run vCenter Server as a VM.

vCenter Server manages ESXi hosts.

You need some sort of hypervisor (such as an ESXi host) to run the vCenter Server VM.

Typically, vCenter Server would not only be managing the ESXi host that it happens to "live" on, there would be multiple hosts and you would be leveraging management functions of vCenter Server such as HA and DRS clusters (of ESXi hosts)

[Homdax]

Hi Scott! 👋

Thanks.

I do only have one host so far, might add more. When those are on more machines and managed by my (virtual) VC things might become slightly more logical.

[nathnael]

Thats what virtualization is all about.....when you have more than one host to manage through your VC it will become more logical