A VxRail cluster can optionally join a compatible customer-supplied vCenter Server that is hosted outside of the VxRail cluster. In addition to the centralized management advantage of a customer-supplied vCenter, this environment allows VMs to be easily migrated between nodes and clusters for optimal workload balance. It also simplifies VxRail upgrades and expansion.

• Each VxRail cluster appears within the vCenter Server as a cluster of ESXi hosts managed under a data center instance.
• Each cluster within the vCenter Server has its own virtual-distributed switch or switches with distinct port group names for network connectivity.
• Each VxRail cluster within the vCenter Server has its own datastore or datastores for virtual machine storage purposes.
• Each VxRail cluster within the vCenter Server has its own VxRail Manager deployed.

The option to deploy a vCenter virtual appliance to a vCenter instance not provided by VxRail has been referred to as “external” or “existing” vCenter Server. The term “customer-managed” vCenter is also applicable in this use case, where customers are responsible for all planning, preparation, configuration, and overall management. For consistency, the term that is used throughout this guide is customer-supplied vCenter Server.

Figure 4.   VxRail clusters joining a customer-supplied vCenter

With the customer-supplied vCenter option, only the VxRail Manager is deployed on the VxRail External Management Network on the VxRail cluster. This External Management Network must be able to reach not only required end users and data center services, but also the customer-supplied vCenter instance. See the VxRail Network Planning Guide for more details.