Choosing the Version of vCenter Server

I mentioned in the previous section that in vSphere 5 vCenter Server now comes not only as a Windows-based application but also as SuSE Linux-based virtual appliance. As a result, one of the primary decisions that you must make as you prepare to deploy vCenter Server is which version of vCenter Server you will use. Will you use the Windows Server-based version or use the virtual appliance?

There are some advantages and disadvantages to each approach:

• The Linux-based virtual appliance comes preloaded with additional services like Auto Deploy (which I covered in Chapter 2), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP), and Syslog. If you need these services on your network, you can provide these services with a single deployment of the vCenter virtual appliance. With the Windows Server-based version, these services are separate installations or possibly even separate VMs (or, worse yet, separate physical servers!).