Following are the procedure to identify vCenter components and dependencies:
- Identify the following core components and services of vCenter 6.7:
- The VMware PSC was introduced in version 6.0. The PSC handles security functions in the vSphere infrastructure. The PSC provides the vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO) service, licensing management, registration services, and the VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA). The PSC can be deployed as a standalone server or embedded on the same server with other required vCenter components.
- vCenter SSO is deployed as a part of the PSC in vSphere 6.x. SSO provides identity management for administrators, users, and applications that interact with the VMware vSphere environment. Active Directory (AD) domains and Open Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (OpenLDAP) authentication sources can be added to provide authentication to the vCenter management components.
- VMware Certificate Authority issues certificates for users accessing vCenter services, machines providing vCenter services, and ESXi hosts. The VMCA service is new to vSphere 6.x and is deployed with the PSC. The VMCA not only issues and manages certificates to vSphere services and components, but also acts as the Certificate Authority (CA) for these certificates. The VMCA can be used as a subordinate CA in an enterprise CA environment.
- VMware vCenter Server: This provides the configuration, access control, and performance monitoring of ESXi/ESX hosts and virtual machines that have been added to the inventory of the vCenter Server. In vSphere 6.x, the VMware vCenter Inventory Service, the VMware vSphere Web Client, the VMware Content Library Service, and other services not provided by the PSC, are all installed with the vCenter Server.
- VMware vCenter Inventory Service: This maintains application and inventory data so that inventory objects, including data centers, clusters, folders, and virtual machines, can be searched and accessed. In a vCenter 6.x deployment, the vCenter Inventory Service is installed on the vCenter Server.
- VMware vSphere Web Client: This allows the connections made to vCenter to manage objects in its inventory by using a web browser. Many of the new features and capabilities since vSphere Version 5.1 can only be configured and managed using the VMware vSphere Web Client. To access and configure new features in vSphere 6.x, the vSphere Web Client is required. The vSphere Web Client Server is installed with the vCenter Server.
- vCenter Database: vCenter Server requires a database to store configurations, logs, and performance data. The database can be an external Microsoft SQL or Oracle database server or the embedded vPostgreSQL database. An external Microsoft SQL database is only supported with a Windows vCenter deployment.
- Identify the common dependencies required to install vCenter and the PSC:
- DNS: Forward and reverse name resolution should be working properly for all systems. Ensure that systems can be resolved by the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), the short name or hostname, and the IP address.
- Time: Time should be synchronized across the environment.