Cisco UCS B200 Blade with vCenter installed

[warquezho0612]

Does putting the vCenter on one of the Blades of 5108 Chassis   possible and can control the ESXi hosts on the other blades? If it is,   on what design it is possible? Installing the vCenter on a single blade   without ESXi or with ESXi?

I ask this because I only experience having the  vCenter  as a separate machine whicn connects only to the network to  control the  ESXi hosts on the 5108 Chassis

Thanks!

[rewilkin]

Yes, you can install vCenter on a blade in the same or different chassis and be able to manage the esx hosts.

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPad App

[warquezho0612]

On what design approace is this?

Dedicate one B200 Blade to a supported Operating System then install the vCenter on top of the Operating system or

Install an ESX/ESXi to the B200 Blade then install a VM on that ESXi/ESX then install the vCenter on top of that VM?

[Marwan ALshawi · Accepted solution]

as mentioned above it is possible

also from best practice design to some extent it is better to have the VCenter in a VM to take the advantage of using Vmotion HA features for example to reduce the risk of losing your vCenter because of HW faular for example

you might have one blade for VCenter use in one chasse and another blad for backup Vcenter for example in another chases !

good luck

if helpful Rate

[warquezho0612]

Hi Marwan,

So what is the best practice in setting up the vCenter on the UCS? Do I need to install the ESX/ESXi host first then an Operating System then install the vCenter ....

Or I will dedicated the blade on a specific Operating System only and install the vCenter on top of that OS?

[ColbyCousens · Accepted solution]

Use this http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_esx_vc_installation_guide.pdf

Page 91 is the beginning of the section "Install vCenter Server in a Virtual Machine" but ESXi install and all the prerequisites are documented in the pages prior.  We have vCenter running in a VM on our UCS blade system and it works fine.  Keep in mind if vCenter goes down you can still use the vSphere client to access the IP's of the original hosts, console your vCenter VM and troubleshoot to get it back up and running.  Just make sure you keep track or your ESXi credentials; you'll need them for vCenter to authenticate and also to get into the individual hosts if vCenter should go down for any reason.