VMware recently released a nice white paper describing running VirtualCenter inside a virtual machine,
Running VirtualCenter in a virtual machine is fully supported by VMware to the same degree as if it were installed on a physical server. There are several reasons why deploying VirtualCenter in a virtual machine would be advantageous:
- Server Consolidation: instead of dedicating an entire physical server to VirtualCenter, you can run it in a virtual machine along with others on the same ESX Server host.
- Mobility: by encapsulating the VirtualCenter server in a virtual machine, you can transfer it from one host to another, enabling maintenance and other activities.
- Snapshots: A snapshot of the VirtualCenter virtual machine can be used for backup, archiving, and other similar purposes.
- Availability: using VMware HA, you can provide high availability for the VirtualCenter server.
The purpose of this paper is to provide guidelines on how to deploy VirtualCenter in a virtual machine. The rest of this paper is organized as follows
- VirtualCenter Architecture
- Sizing and Configuration
- Installation
- Limitations
- Allowed Functionality
- VirtualCenter in a VMware HA Cluster
Read it, here.