VMware Cloud Community
BostonTechGuy
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎01-19-2016 04:56 AM
Jump to solution

Dedicated vCenter for VDI

Running this by the discussions.

Still best practice for dedicated vCenters for VDI?  Have a client that is doing a major upgrade of their vSphere environment.  The VDI Desktop Service Group has requested dedicated vCenters to run the environments across the globe.  VMware Eng team is on the fence.  I think its due to more vCenters in the environment vs technical requirements or best practice.  Licenses is not an issue.


It would be a vCenter 5.5 environment. 

Wanted to get thoughts out here.

Thanks,

Boston Tech Guy

Tags (2)
0 Kudos
1 Solution

Accepted Solutions
TomHowarth
Leadership
Leadership
‎01-19-2016 07:54 AM
Jump to solution

As a general design principle I have separate vCenters for each VDI Desktop Pod.

Tom Howarth VCP / VCAP / vExpert
VMware Communities User Moderator
Blog: http://www.planetvm.net
Contributing author on VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment
Contributing author on VCP VMware Certified Professional on VSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410

View solution in original post

4 Replies
TomHowarth
Leadership
Leadership
‎01-19-2016 07:54 AM
Jump to solution

As a general design principle I have separate vCenters for each VDI Desktop Pod.

Tom Howarth VCP / VCAP / vExpert
VMware Communities User Moderator
Blog: http://www.planetvm.net
Contributing author on VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment
Contributing author on VCP VMware Certified Professional on VSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410
JamieGator32
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎02-06-2016 07:05 PM
Jump to solution

We keep our vCenter for Horizon View including SSO completely separate. If you have composer installed on your vCenter I would definitely keep it separate from my production vm servers environment. They just have different needs and in our case entirely different admins supporting them. I don't know if it is truly a VMware best practice but it should be if it isn't.

James F Cruce VCP6.5-DCV Gainesville VMUG Leader http://vmug.com/gainesville @jamescruce http://astgl.com
0 Kudos
TomHowarth
Leadership
Leadership
‎02-10-2016 02:45 AM
Jump to solution

I can not abide the term Best Practice, but it is a valid design methodology.  it is used by VMware PSO in their designs.

Tom Howarth VCP / VCAP / vExpert
VMware Communities User Moderator
Blog: http://www.planetvm.net
Contributing author on VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment
Contributing author on VCP VMware Certified Professional on VSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410
0 Kudos
BostonTechGuy
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎02-21-2016 05:59 PM
Jump to solution

Circling back on this.

Thanks Tom... I agree 100%.  So many times have I not used Best Practice because what we designed was best for the business requirements.  Then there is the ugly side of Best Practice.  I have a client whose previous VMware "owners" were so bad that they had zero clue how to mange an enterprise with 8K VMs.  They decided for security reasons to enable all best practice recommendations from VMware Security Documents... Let me let that sink in a bit.. ALL BEST PRACTICES.  Regardless of the business requirement or the situation.  The Quality and Security team requires documentation.. this doc was 57 pages long.  When I took over to clean up the VMware environment.. the settings made the environment unusable and in many case the best practices contradicted each other.  Took some time to clean that up.

Now that I have had my soap box moment of stating always design to requirements.. I believe that dedicated VC designed to own all the VDI infrastructure is the way to go.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to review this and speak on it.

Thanks,
Boston Tech Guy

0 Kudos