Can I have multiple vCenter instances within a single vRA 6.2.4 tenant?

[ronin2000]

We would like to leverage Business Groups versus creating another tenant (one company) but we cannot find information around best practices concerning this approach, i.e. multiple vCenters.

[rcporto]

Yes you can! The following image should gives you what can be done:

Since you can have multiple Fabric Groups, and each Fabric Group can point to a different vCenter endpoint, you can have different Business Groups on the same Tenant and using different Fabric Groups (and different vCenter endpoints).

[HariRajan · Accepted solution]

It is very much possible through VRA in the existing tenant and business group , you need to create a new endpoint and Configure it to the  new VC ,  to respect the best practice , you can install vSphere Agent on a different VM.

Then you need to create the fabric group and select the cluster of newly added vCenter .

Next is you need to have option to call this different VC based on the request from each bushiness group right ? , for doing that .

you need to create a location file by editing the datacenterlocations.xml file in the IAAS server , you can name it anyway you need ,

in VMware documentation it is based on geographical location logic , if you need you can give VC Name (VC-A-PROD, VC-B-LAB).

Please refer VMware documentation for doing that

http://pubs.vmware.com/vCAC-60/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vcac.system.administration.doc%2FGUID-6...

e by editin We are almost done  and now we need to call this named data center locations in compute resource , go to the compute resource your new cluster is auto-populated since you created the fabric group, just edit the compute resource , Select the datacenter location filed in  LOCATION tab (say VC-B-LAB) .

Next is edit the exiting compute resource from VC -A and select Location  as VC-A-PROD

Now you have done the mapping part and you need to create a reservation as usual and map to the existing business , this enables two reservation for each business group , one is pointing to VC -A and another is pointing to VC -B .

Now you need to optimize further right , I mean that whenever you request catalog , users should get an option to select the locations right,

logically the place to create the VM's .  You don't need to create multiple blue prints ,in the existing blue prints itself enable "DISPLAY LOCATION ON REQUEST" . This enabled the users to select the VC (EndPoint) during the catalog request and automate the process.

Refer:

http://pubs.vmware.com/vCAC-60/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vcac.iaas.all.doc%2FGUID-CC9FE0C2-E77C-...

You also wants to do one more things , just copy the blue print template to new VC without changing the template name.

Hope this helps.

[ronin2000]

Thanks Richardsom this helps a lot.

[ronin2000]

Thank you Hari, the additional detail is especially helpful.

[rcporto]

You're welcome and don't forget mark answers as correct or helpful... remember that marking question as Assumed Answered will not give points to people that helped you 🙂