Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
8.
On the following screen you will be asked to register this instance of the vSphere Web
Client with your existing SSO installation. Be sure to type in your SSO administrator@
vsphere.local password correctly, and make sure the URL Lookup Service points to the
SSO server; then click Next. Click yes if prompted to accept the SSO SSL certii cate.
9.
Finally, click Install to commence the installation and start the services.
10.
Once the installation is complete, click Finish to close the installer.
Now that you've successfully installed all the components to get vCenter Server up and
running, you'll probably want to log in and get started. Unless you also wish to know how to
deploy either Linked Mode or the virtual appliance version of vCenter, feel free to skip to the
section “Exploring vCenter Server.”
Installing vCenter Server in a Linked Mode Group
What is a linked mode group, and why might you want to install multiple instances of vCen-
ter Server into such a group? If you need more ESXi hosts or more VMs than a single vCenter
Server instance can handle, or if you need more than one instance of vCenter Server, you
can install multiple instances of vCenter Server to scale outward or sideways and have those
instances share licensing and permission information. These multiple instances of vCenter
Server that share information among them are referred to as a
linked
mode
group
. In a linked
mode environment, there are multiple vCenter Server instances, and each of the instances has
its own set of hosts, clusters, and VMs.
vCenter Server linked mode uses Microsoft ADAM to replicate the following information
between the instances:
Connection information (IP addresses and ports)
◆
Certii cates and thumbprints
◆
Licensing information
◆
User roles and permissions
◆
There are a few different reasons why you might need multiple vCenter Server instances run-
ning in a linked mode group. With vCenter Server 4.0, one common reason was the size of the
environment. With the dramatic increases in capacity incorporated into vCenter Server 4.1 and
above, the need for multiple vCenter Server instances due to size will likely decrease. However,
you might still use multiple vCenter Server instances. You might prefer to deploy multiple vCen-
ter Server instances in a linked mode group to accommodate organizational or geographic con-
straints, for example.
Table 3.1 shows the maximum number of hosts or VMs for a single instance of vCenter Server
for versions 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, and 5.5. Using a linked mode group is necessary if you need to manage
more than the number of ESXi hosts or VMs listed.
