I was playing around in my lab and figured I would give the vCenter Appliance (VCVA) a try. I realize that today there are limitations when it comes to the vCenter Appliance and I wanted to list those to get them out in the open:
- No Update Manager
- No Linked-Mode
- No support for the VSA (vSphere Storage Appliance)
- Only support for Oracle as the external database
- Embedded database, DB2, only supports 5 hosts and 50 VMs
- No support for vCenter Heartbeat
Now that you’ve seen the limitations why would you even bother testing it? You will still need Windows if you are running VUM and you can only use Oracle for large environments… Those are probably the two biggest constraints for 80% of you reading this and I agree they are huge constraints. But I am not saying that you should go ahead and deploy this in production straight away, I do feel that the VCVA deserves to be tested as it is the way forward in my opinion! Why? Most importantly, it is very simple to implement… Seriously setting it up takes a couple of minutes. You just import the OVF, accept the EULA, select the correct database type and start the vCenter service. Without any hassle it also includes a Syslog Collector service, Autodeploy and the Webclient. But that’s not all… If you look at it from a strategic perspective this is the first step. A first step towards a possible distributed vCenter solution, and I know some of you have been waiting on that for a while, so why not get your hands dirty straight away and start testing it.
I don’t think those limitations are going to be an issue for SMBs like a majority of my customers so I can’t wait to give it a try. Hopefully, it is well received and they continue to add features going forward for the Fortune 500 crowd.
If no Update Manager it seems a waste of time since how will we update/upgrade our hosts when patches etc. come out??
This is a big step BACKward IMNSHO — VMware hates getting their hands dirty with SMB business and they overcharge for everything and they still want our business…????
Still hope other companies eat VMware for breakfast in the SMB arena, they need to shrink their collective heads a little bit.
And HOW many SMBs can afford an Oracle database much less learn Oracle?? Double dumb IMO.
mySQL or PostgreSQL would have been far better choices 1,000 times over.
We still must waste time/money for a Windows license for vCenter 5, sigh…
My bad, I missed the DB2 part, still mySQL or PostgreSQL would have been better, then possibly no host/VM limits.
Ack pfft, I missed the DB2 line as well. Alright, consider my complaint dialed back a notch,
Internal database is DB2 which requires no license so cheap.
Duncan, I wouldn’t say the embedded DB2 (5 host / 50 VM) is a limitation, this is no different to the embedded MSSQL Express on the installable vCenter. This is a soft limit geared for satisfactory performance when both vCenter and DB are local.
It is the supported limitation. 50 VMs is fairly low though and would only work in small test environment or small SMB. It is workable I agree but still a constraint to keep in mind, and yes that also applies to the Express database.
Are both the 5 hosts and 50 VMs a support limit?
For the database size itself, could I have 3 hosts and 75 VMs instead, or are both numbers hard coded?
We’re a small shop and the requirement for Oracle seems completely arbitrary to me. Why can’t they support MySQL, SQLite, Postgres, MSSQL etc? Why only Oracle??
That is a matter of time, I can assure you the vCenter team is working on support for other DBs.
Other DBs — in time for vSphere 6, to be announced in 2013??
I will remain skeptical of this whole thing for a LONG time.
DB2 reminds me IBM….
While not directly related to the appliance, this does bring up a question I’ve been pondering. Duncan, do you know if vSphere 5 changes the story for virtualized vCenters? (maybe the subject of a blog post?)
In particular, two of the major limitations I see for a virtualized vCenter in 4.x are:
1) A vCenter VM can’t vMotion itself
2) VUM can’t/won’t update an ESX server hosting itself or its vCenter
I don’t think either of those limitations exist in 4.x.
A vCenter VM can vMotion. I have heard of vCenter dropping out when vMotioning, on slow storage, but vCenter definitely can vMotion.
I haven’t heard of any VUM issues with a virtual vCenter.
Our vcenter VM happily vmotions and I haven’t seen any issues with VUM either (running 4.1). When patching a host it should be in maintenance mode anyway so technically the host won’t have any VMs on it anyway.
Most of my experience is with VUM 4.0. In that case, if my VUM VM was on a host and I told it to remediate the host, it wouldn’t do anything. If I told it to remediate a different host, it’d put that host into maintenance mode and do the remediation as normal. This really comes into play when I tell it to remediate an entire cluster. Every host in the cluster would be patched, except for the host running VUM. Perhaps it is fixed in 4.1.
4.1 fixed those issues with VUM from memory. It wasn’t that vCenter could never vMotion itself it was that the host wouldn’t re-mediate if vCenter or the VUM vm’s resided on it. It wasn’t a big deal, it’s not hard to manually move 2 vm’s.
With respect to the other statements, It’s a 1.0 product, we know it has limitations which will be most likely worked around in future versions as Duncan says. Take it for what it is now, it will only work in smallish lab environments but that’s fine by me for the time being. I’ve moved on!
Does vCenter Appliance have size limitation?
SQL Express’s 4GB DB limitation always annoys me, when testing products which requires modification of vCenter logging depth. (eg. Chargeback)
If vCenter Appliance has no such limitation, it would be suitable for testing.
DB2 Expresses limitation is it will only use 2 CPUs and 2GB of RAM on the host it’s running but does not have a limitation on overall DB size.
An other important issue I see is the lack of Linked-Mode, in combination with vRAM entiletments.
With multiple vCenter Appliance, vRAM pools can not be shared across multiple vCenter appliance instances since the do not support Linked-Mode
Linked mode is not going to be an issue in my opinionl those who will be using this probably won’t have multiple vcenter servers
It could be if it is a first step to that “Possible distributed vCenter solution” you proposed up above
.
It takes a lot more to implement that approach…
Is it possible to upload 2k3 sysprep files to customize 2k3 guests?
Hi Raimes,
Yes you can upload the files to /etc/vmware-vpx/sysprep on the vCVA appliance.
Mark.
I am surprised at the lack of support for VSA. This vcenter virtual appliance is clearly focused on small business, as is VSA… so why wouldn’t the two be compatible?
Sounds like the two engineering groups weren’t talking to each other.
Also, as other people have said, the 50 VM limit seems rather arbitrary and low.
I can only assume that future releases will remove these limitations.
The vSA was interesting and surprising to me as well. Here we have an SMB vSAN appliance and can’t use with our SMB vCenter. On the other hand, these are both 1.0 products and VMware has always been responsive add features/integration in furture releases.
I wonder how you can say the vSA is an “SMB” product … have you looked at the price of vSA? For that price, a SMB customer can buy an entire SAN today!
If you don’t believe: IBM DS3500 with a bunch of disks and SAS host connections and a few SAS HBAs are cheaper than a vSA – for which you would still need the physicals disks and probably a few more, since it does RAID1 and not RAID5 or RAID6 like the DS3500.
Given the price of the vSA I wonder if there is ANYONE who makes sense as a customer for it. IMO the vSA would only make sense if it were given away free with the Essentials kits, for example.
According to VM Ware Documentation:
pg. 43 vCenter host / mnagement guide
embedded Use the embedded database. This option is available only for a small
inventory size, with fewer than 100 hosts and 1000 virtual machines.
So it’s NOT limited to 5 hosts, its 100 and 1000 VM’s
I can’t seem to set up a split network configuration (vManagement Network/LAN). I added a second NIC but it does not show up in the web interface. Anyone knows if this is supported at all?
“So it’s NOT limited to 5 hosts, its 100 and 1000 VM’s”
True!!!
I just finished “vSphere5 What’s new” course and the
Hosts/VM’s are limited only with amount of Ram !!
Ram / Hosts / VMs
8GB / 10-100 / 100-1000
13GB / 100-400 / 1000-4000
17GB / >400 / >4000
Any updates on the availability or Update Manager on the vCenter appliance?
These numbers are misleading. The VMware documents are being corrected and will display the vCenter Appliance with the embedded database, will support up to 5 hosts or 50 VMs and no more. This is a soft limit but performance will greatly be impacted if you were to use higher numbers which will not be supported
Justin
I have been testing vCenter appliance for a month now using the embedded database, two vSphere 5.0 hosts and over a dozen VMs. I like the quick deployment, the web-based management and stability. The vCenter appliance can be seamlessly vmotioned between hosts without any issues.
In addition, new features like Storage I/O control are easily configured.
Overall a good product but the question remains: would organizations consider deploying the appliance in production?
I think so if they were going for what like Duncan was saying about a distributed platform and SMB. For larger enterprises its an easy no with these limitations in place. I wouldn’t consider it but for small remote office deployments of 3 esxi host. EVEN then not being able to VSA may null the benefit of those remote locations unless you take something HP left-hand or openfiler… anyways.
You can use update manager but you will need to install it on a win box and point it to the vcenter app. what i did was took my sql box we have added update manager and pointed it. so far so good.
what is the limmit on the host as i am loving this as my windows admins cant patch it or fudge with it.
I read all the comments to see if anyone pointed this out. Cookie for you Cutch69.
Of course you can run Update Mgr standalone.
Can SRM be implemented with vCSA?
I found the answer: yes, it is possible.
Duncan, Is there any public roadmap for the vcenter? We are considering to activate vCenter HB but cant see clear signs of vcenter will remain like it is, or will it change to vSA, what would make HB useless…
We have tested the appliance and excited to see more features in later versions. It is definetly a step forward!
There’s no public roadmap available. I think the Appliance is the way forward, but that is my opinion and not necessarily VMware’s strategic direction.
Hi Duncan, do you recommend this for an environment having 3000+ Vms? with Oracle db? would patching be an issue without update manager?
Cheers
Mirza
The appliance is a long time overdue component and is only in first release ..I certainly would not place this in an enterprise environment just yet !
Speed is awesome though and it just works.. like most *nix implementations.
SO many important limitations at this stage though..seems like dev were under pressure and also imagine not supporting the VSA in some way or another.
I also still do not understand why the company want to kill all their SMB support and customers by making it so expensive instead of making it cheaper which will catch a bigger market.
Who wouldn’t pay 10 bucks for the best virtualization product on the planet!
vmware ..go back and rethink and side with the people again ..we are missing you !
What is the limit to vcenter server essential license plus for SMB?
How about HA, does it mean it will not work since – No support for vCenter Heartbeat ???