In this option, the three fault domains are at the same location; the vCenter Server, vSAN Witness appliance, and the VxRail nodes. An additional ESXi host is required to host vSAN Witness appliance and customer-supplied vCenter Server. vSAN Witness appliance, and customer-supplied vCenter cannot be hosted in the VxRail vSAN 2-node cluster.
Figure 10. Localized vCenter and Witness Appliance
Table 2. Deployment options considerations
Option | Pros | Cons |
Centralized Management and Witness | Single pane of glass for the management of multiple 2-node clusters Centralization of Witness appliances reduces licensing and hardware costs. | Network costs for vCenter and Witness communications |
Centralized Management, localized Witness | Single pane of glass for the management of multiple 2-node clusters | Network costs for vCenter communications Software and hardware costs for deployment of witness appliances |
Localized management and witness | Reduces network cost that is associated to normal operations and witness contingency | Software and hardware costs for deployment of multiple vCenter Servers and witness appliances Network Bandwidth that is still needed for maintenance and troubleshooting which is the larger bandwidth requirement |