vSphere 6.0 introduced two supported architectures: a vCenter Server with an embedded PSC and vCenter Server with an external PSC. The following components are part of the vCenter Server installations:

• The PSC group of infrastructure services, which contains vCenter Single Sign-On, vCenter License Service, vCenter Lookup Service, and VMware Certificate Authority.
• The vCenter Server group of services, which includes vCenter Server, vSphere Web Client, Inventory Service, vSphere Auto Deploy, vSphere ESXi Dump Collector, vSphere Syslog Collector on Windows, and vSphere Syslog Service for the vCenter Server.

vCenter Server with an embedded PSC

One architecture option is to deploy the PSC and vCenter Server on a single virtual machine.

Figure 1.   vCenter Server with embedded PSC

vCenter Server with an external PSC

The other option is to deploy the vCenter Server and the PSC on separate virtual machines. In this architecture, the PSC can be shared across several vCenter Server instances. You can install a PSC and then install several vCenter Server instances and register them with the PSC. You can then install another PSC and configure it to replicate data with the first PSC. Finally, you can install additional vCenter Server instances and register them with the second PSC.

Figure 2.   vCenter Server with external PSC

For more details about vCenter Server installation, see vCenter Server Installation and Setup.