best practice number of vcenter servers

[DanielSoares]

hello

my conf is vsphere enterprise+ 4.0 with ESX4 and ESX4i

I am using 1 vcenter for 2 ESX clusters(4 hosts each) in 2 different sites

We have an interconnexion of 1Gb between both sites

we will install 2 new cluster 4 hosts each in 2 new sites one with 1 Gb interconnexion and one with 200 Mb

my question is from whitch bandwith is it better ton install a vcenter localy in the remote site ?

or is it better to have one vcenter only

one of the sites will be the recovery site if we install vmware site recovery do we need a second vcenter?

thanks for your help

[Troy_Clavell]

if bandwidth is a consideration, you may want to install a new vCenter instance locally. Also, you could always used linked mode and join the two together therefore giving you a single point of administration for both instances.

....and yes, if using SRM the DR site will require a vCenter instance as well.

[DanielSoares]

do you know bellow witch intersite bandwith it becomes a consideration?

is 200 Mb suficient for 4 ESX to communicate with the vcenter?

[Troy_Clavell]

is 200 Mb suficient for 4 ESX to communicate with the vcenter?

you may have your hosts go into disconnect/not responding status, but you can always adjust your timeout in vCenter

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/02/11/increasing-the-time-out-within-vcenter-for-remote-esx-hosts/

[mittim12]

Each one of our remote sites has 1 two node cluster with a 10MB MPLS connection back to our main datacenter where vCenter is hosted. We haven't had any issues.

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