vCenter Server in a VM - Catch22 scenarios

[RyanWI]

I run a 35 host/600VM VI3.5 environment and am planning on going vSphere4 soon. I'm wondering if folks out there have any postive/negative feedback regarding running vCenter4 in a VM. We licence a ESX cluster with SQL Enterprise so I could save some licensing money by deploying vCenter w/sql enterprise in that cluster.

Thanks in advance

[mikepodoherty]

If you choose to run vCenter in a VM, the recommended configuration is to have the VM configured for high availability.

[RyanWI]

That shouldn't be be too much of an issue. We license everything for HA and I can allocate synchronously mirrored storage as the VMFS datastore. Can't do FT since it's only 1 vCPU course.

[jbogardus]

I've had no problem running vSphere in a VM for my company as an initial test. For my clients I've put VC 2.5 in a VM for several environments. You can disable DRS moves for this VM so you can keep track of which host it is on better. That way if you loose connectivity to it you won't need to search through connecting to 35 hosts directly before you find the one running this VC VM to work on getting it back online.

[RyanWI]

Is the DRS exclusion an Advanced Option in the VMwware DRS config or on the VM? I'm not sure I know how to disable DRS for a specific VM without pinning it to a host

[jbogardus]

There are 3 levels of DRS:

1. Manual

2. Partially automated

3. Fully automated

When you first configure the cluster you set the default for all the VMs in the cluster. You can also change this Cluster level default at any time.

Once you have VMs in the DRS Cluster you can view the cluster properties and see an option under 'VMware DRS' - ' Virutal Machine Options'. This allows you to set the per VM DRS automation level. So you can set you VC VM to Partially automated or Manual and it will be excluded from being moved to other hosts automatically for load balancing. It's not completely pinned to a host since you can still move it using manual VMotion.

[RyanWI]

Now I feel a bit dumb. Thanks for pointing that out.