Do I need vCenter Server?

[paulhobbs]

Hi Experts,

I recently bought the vSphere 4 Small Business Essentials bundle so I can set up my demo/dev environment. I have a server which is going to be co-located in a data centre, and on the host there will be a few different VMs which will be used for hosting various dev and demo sites of different applications.

The host has a single dual-core CPU (Intel 6320 1.86 GHz), 8 GB RAM, and 2 x 250 GB SATA hard disks.

I have successfully installed ESX on the host as well as the vSphere Client on my laptop. At this stage I can login and I am able to manage the server - I can create new VMs, etc.

I have two questions:

Q1. What I am wondering about is do I need to install vCenter Server? At this stage I don't anticipate I will be managing any more ESX hosts - at least not for a few months. If I do need to install vCenter Server, where is the best place to install it? I have a Windows Server 2003 server which sits in my office - is it a good candidate for installing vCenter Server? Should I install vCenter Server on a VM on the ESX host?

Q2. The other question I have pertains to storage and converting existing VMs. This ESX host was previously used to host VMs, but I was using the free VMware Server. Before installing ESX I copied all the VMs plus a bunch of iso files onto an external 500 GB hard disk. As mentioned above there are 2 hard disks, each being 250 GB SATA disks. ESX is installed on one of the disks, and is taking up about 10 GB or so.

What is the best configuration for the two internal disks? I would prefer to not worry about deciding which disk a particular VM is going to sit on. I would rather just have all the VMs sitting in their own folder, but have them all under a single parent folder, for example:

/home/virtualmachines/vm1

/home/virtualmachines/vm2

/home/virtualmachines/vm3

etc

Is this possible/advisable? With regard to the VMs themselves - what is the process of getting them added to the Inventory? When I log in to the vSphere Client I can add a new VM, but I want to add an existing VM. Do the VMs need to be converted to be ESX compatible?

I am quite new to using and managing ESX, although I have worked extensively with VMs and the free VMware Server for several years now.

Cheers,

Paul Hobbs

[krowczynski]

Q1:

You need vcenter for enterprse taska like, configure HA, DRS, CLoning, Template, FT and so on.

I would suggest you to install it as a vm.

[paulhobbs]

Cool - now I know that I need it because I want to be able to set up templates, cloning, etc. Being a dev environment I am not so concerned with HA or DR.

If I install vCenter Server on a VM, I assume that I need to first create the VM with an OS, and then I install vCenter on the new VM? What OS should the VM have - can it be Linux, or does it have to be Windows? I don't care either way - just curious.

Cheers,

Paul

[krowczynski]

Look at this pdf.

[Gerrit_Lehr]

Even though there is a linux Version of VCenter 2.5, this is still exeprimental and very beta so Windows would be the choice.

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".

[paulhobbs]

I mentioned in my original post that I have number of VMs plus some iso files on an external hard disk. I would like to copy them to the ESX host but the external disk needs to be connected via USB 2. Can I mount this disk on the ESX host? I have plugged it in, but I can't seem to get the host to detect it.

When I run "fdisk -l", I see the internal disks, but not the external disk with the VMs on it. If I can't use a USB disk with the ESX host, how can I copy files on to the ESX host?

Cheers,

Paul

[Gerrit_Lehr]

No, USB storage is not supported in ESX. Connect it to a Windows Maschine and upload the files using the datastore browser in VIClient. You can then load the VMs into the inventory in vcenter.

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".

[RyeGuyWpg]

Note that if your Windows 2003 server is a PDC, vCenter won't install as I found out today.

I have the same question about vCenter. Do I really need it? I was running ESXi 3.5 with the Infrastructure client and it did exactly what I needed it to but now, it seems as though I have to install the vCenter server in order to install the converter which is not practical in my environment. I don't have an extra server sitting around to install vCenter and I tried installing on a workstation and it sucked the life right out of it and I can't see how I need it.

Is there a standalone version of the converter available? I essentially use it to take base images off the ESXi server and use them on workstations for testing an as long as I have the vSphere client for administration and the converter to get my workstation images on and off as necessary, I'm happy.

**EDIT**

I just found the standalone converter version 4 so it appears as though I can get by without vCenter Server

[Rumple]

VMs plus some iso files on an external hard disk. - personally I wouldn't take up space on your esx host for ISO's.

I always leave them on a network share and mount them through my Client...save my vmfs for when I forget to remove a snapshot from a VM :O)