Perhaps due to its popularity, the most common database type used with vCenter Server is Microsoft SQL Server. The installation of SQL Server is out of the scope of this book but you can find detailed information on Microsoft's website at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/database-engine/install-windows/install-sql-server. Once the installation of SQL Server has been completed, you need to create the database and configure it to connect with vCenter Server.

To configure and manage the SQL database, you can install Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSCM) (download at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssms/download-sql-server-management-studio-ssms) for having a graphical user interface or running scripts. The vCenter Server installer package contains the example scripts at vCenterServerdbschemaDB_and_schema_creation_scripts_MSSQL.txt.

Before creating the database, the connection between vCenter Server and SQL Server has some key points you should keep in mind:

• A database cannot be shared with different vCenter instances. Each vCenter Server must have its own database.
• The user account used to access the vCenter Server database should be granted the db_owner role.
• vCenter Server supports as authentication type both Windows and mixed-mode. The Windows authentication should be the preferred configuration to increase security. Mixed-mode should be used if you add third-party tools that support SQL authentication only. However, you can always change the SQL authentication mode from the SSCM tool.
• If a domain service account is used to run vCenter Server, the SQL Server database must be configured to allow the domain account access to SQL Server.
• If Microsoft Windows built-in system account is used to run the vCenter Server service, vCenter Server supports only Data Source Name (DSN) with SQL Server authentication.

When the database configuration has completed, the ODBC DSN must be created to complete the setup.