Virtualization layer

VMware vCenter Server 6.x is deployed on the VMware vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) to manage hypervisors and VMs. VMware vCenter Update Manager (VUM) is fully integrated with the VMware vCSA and assists with host patch management.

VMware vSphere 6.7 deployments

In an external deployment, AMP Central or AMP-VX and the VxBlock System 1000 each have a VMware vCSA instance with a pair of VMware Platform Service Controllers (PSCs). In an embedded VMware PSC deployment, AMP Central or AMP-VX and the VxBlock System 1000 have only the VMware vCSA.

VMware vSphere 6.5 deployments

In a regular deployment, AMP Central or AMP-VX and the VxBlock System 1000 each have a VMware vCSA instance with a pair of VMware Platform Service Controllers (PSCs). VMware PSCs are optional.

AMP management

The AMP Central or AMP-VX hosts the VMware vCenter Server and the VxBlock System VMware vCenter Server instances.

AMP-3S supports a single VMware vCSA to manage the local AMP resources and the platform workload resources. AMP Central has a dedicated VMware vCSA to manage local AMP resources and has an extra VMware vCSA or VMware vCSAs to manage platform workload resources.

The VMware vCenter Server provides AMP-VX, AMP Central, or AMP-3S the ability to:

• Clone VMs
• Create templates
• Monitor hosts and VMs
• Create alerts
• VMware vSphere vMotion and VMware Storage vMotion
• Configure of VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and VMware vSphere HA clusters

VxBlock System administrators can create and apply the following alarms to all managed objects in VMware vCenter Server:

• Data center, cluster, and host health, inventory, and performance
• Datastore health and capacity
• VM usage, performance, and health
• Virtual network usage and health

Databases

The VMware vCSA uses the embedded PostgreSQL database. The VMware VUM and the VMware vCSA share the same PostgreSQL database server, but use separate PostgreSQL database instances.

Authentication

The VxBlock System supports the VMware Single Sign-On (SSO) to integrate the following multiple identity sources:

• AD
• Open LDAP
• Local accounts for authentication

VMware vSphere 6.7 includes a pair of VMware PSC Linux appliances to provide the VMware SSO. VMware vCenter Server, Inventory, Web Client, SSO, Core Dump Collector, and VMware VUM run as separate services. Each service can be configured to use a dedicated service account depending on the security and directory services requirements.

VMware vCenter Server features

Dell EMC supports the following VMware vCenter Server features:

• VMware SSO
• VMware PSC
• VMware vSphere Web Client (used with VxBlock Central)
• VMware vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS)
• VMware vSphere HA
• VMware DRS
• VMware Fault Tolerance
• VMware vSphere vMotion
• VMware Storage vMotion
• VMware Storage vMotion (Layer 3 capability available for compute resources)
• Raw Device Mappings
• Resource Pools
• Storage DRS (capacity only)
• Storage driven profiles (user-defined only)
• Distributed power management (up to 50 percent of VMware vSphere ESXi hosts or blades)
• VMware Syslog Service
• VMware Core Dump Collector
• VMware vCenter Web Client

VMware vSphere 6.x enables support of the following other VMware vCenter Server features:

• Embedded deployment
• Embedded linked mode
• VMware vCenter HA simple deployment
• VMware vCenter HA advanced deployment
• VMware vSphere HTML5 Client

All engineered guidance and procedures for VMware vCenter HA assume four hosts.