Why you need vCenter Server and can't live without it
April 10, 2017

Why you need vCenter Server and can't live without it

Stefan Semo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with VMware vCenter Server

Managing multiple ESXi Hosts is no easy task, especially if you wish to take advantage of the VMware automation features. Once you have 2 or more hosts vCenter Server becomes a necessity. While it used to be that you needed Windows Server to deploy and run vCenter, VMware has been steadily improving the Linux appliance (vCSA), to the point where almost all functionality is now included.

From a business standpoint it is a winner because:

  • There is no need to pay for a Windows OS license for vCenter Server
  • There is no need to upgrade the Windows OS or maintain third-party tools on the server running vCenter
  • Because there is no Windows OS or vCenter application to install in windows, the deployment is very fast.
  • Multiple hosts management
  • Allows for Cloning, Host and Datastore Migrations
  • Allows for power management across multiple hosts
  • The HTML5 Web interface of vCenter (VCSA) install not inclusive of all functionality.
  • Auto-Updates of the appliance are still lacking
  • Deployment wizard is a bit buggy and cumbersome
  • Great ROI was achieved with our deployment of vCenter since we had to manage many hosts. The automation features of VCS saved countless hours of manual work.
  • It was positive in the fact that we were able to develop "gold server" and thus allow deployment of templates and clones very fast, reducing time to setup a new Windows or Linux VM from hours to seconds.
Honestly it made no sense to look elsewhere since vCenter is an integral component of VMware and designed and supported but he same team. We need to ensure business operational continuity and did not want to end up in a finger pointing contest with a 3rd party product.
When managing multiple hosts VCS is mandatory, however in environments where hosts are running separately and independently, it is not needed.