Hi,
We're about to purchase and deploy vCenter 7.x to manage our remote site offices ESXi hosts. Our Datacentre based infrastructure is managed by a 3rd party (9 hosts in a DRS cluster attached to a SAN managed by their own vCenter server to which we have no access).
Reading the deployment guide I note:
If you want to deploy the appliance on an ESXi host, verify that the ESXi host is not in lockdown or maintenance mode and not part of a fully automated DRS cluster.
If you want to deploy the appliance on a DRS cluster of the inventory of a vCenter Server instance, verify that the cluster contains at least one ESXi host that is not in lockdown or maintenance mode.
As we intend to deploy 'our' vCenter server into that central DRS cluster infrastructure in our datacentre - I'd like to know if is this possible or would we have to deploy it on a host outside of the managed cluster? Our new vCenter deployment would not be managing any of the clustered hosts, just those on our remote sites.
Hopefully this explains what we're trying to achieve, but let me know if there are any queries.
Many thanks,
Steve
You can deploy vCenter anywhere you want, even on the cluster you are managing to be honest. Many customers, with smaller environments, do this.
Anyway, just deploy it in the central datacenter and you should be fine.
I am guessing the comment around "fully automated drs" is there to prevent some kind of loadbalancing to happen during the provisioning of vCenter itself
OK - thanks for replying - having read further into the guide https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/vsphere-vcenter-server-703-installation-guide.pdf
Page 30, step 5 of the deployment guide mentions having administrative access / root access. I think this is going to be the blocker now for us as we have our own custom role provided for us on the managed cluster - we essentially can create/configure/delete VM's, take snapshots and move the VM between different hosts / storage, but I think that's all. I can't see what rights this role gives us, so assume it's a non-admin role, which is a shame.
Thanks for your initial reply, related question now based on the above but I think we're going to have to deploy to one of the local hosts - can this be done i.e. run vCenter on a host it is going to be managing bearing in mind it'll have the Remote Office / Branch Office edition licence on it?
Steve
