Criteria for number of VC 'Datacenters' ?

[gotwings]

I have a VC2 server and a mixed environment of 2.5.4 and 3.0.1 ESX servers as I upgrade. I have found that templates cannot be deployed across datacenters.

I mimicked my VC 1.4 layout and treated Farms as datacenters so I have roughly 5 datacenters.

Am I way off base? I'd like some personal input on this. I have roughly 400 VMs on these 30 ESX's.

Can I just do 1 datacenter and have (yellow) folders to hold the vm's in a logical arrangement (by app etc?)

[VirtualNoitall]

Hello,

I would go with one DC and use folders to create a hierarchy. We have roughly the same numbers you do ( 500 vms and 25 hosts )and have them all within one DC.

Hope that helps!

[gotwings]

ttt

anyone else?

[FredPeterson]

I would use Datacenters only to separate physical farms that do not share storage - or physical (literal) datacenters.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Templates stored on shared storage seen only by one data center will not be deployable to any other data center or ESX server that does not share the same storage.

You could create one LUN with all your templates and make it seen by EVERY ESX server, but there is a limit to the # of ESX servers that can see a given LUN. It is usually 8 or 16 depending on your remote storage.

Another option is to have a process that copies templates from LUN in datacenter A to LUN in datacenter B. This way the templates are always available.

Just some thoughts.

Best regards,

Edward