Deploying the vCenter Server components on a virtual machine is a VMware recommended practice. When vCenter is deployed on a virtual machine, it is possible to take advantage of the portability and availability provided by the virtual infrastructure. One of the primary advantages of deploying vCenter components on virtual machines is that VMware High Availability (HA) can be leveraged to protect the management environment from a hardware failure or a virtual machine crash.

The vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) is a preconfigured, Linux-based virtual machine that has been optimized to run the vCenter Server and the associated services. It includes a PostgreSQL-embedded database. A remote database connection can be configured to support larger deployments.

A limitation of the VCSA is that Microsoft SQL is not supported as a remote database. In previous versions of vCenter, VUM had to be installed on a separate Windows server. Since 6.7, VUM is installed within the VCSA, so a separate Windows server just for VUM is no longer needed.

vCenter Linked Mode creates groups of vCenter Servers that can be managed centrally. Logging in to one member of the vCenter Linked Mode group allows an administrator to view and manage the inventories of all the vCenter Servers in the group. vCenter 6.7 provides an Enhanced Linked Mode that allows for linking both VCSA and Windows vCenter Server deployments.

The PSC, vCenter Server services, and other supporting components can all be installed on a single Windows server, or each component can be installed on a separate server. Installing all of the components on a single server simplifies deployment to support a small environment. Installing each component on a separate server adds some complexity, but allows the resources for each service to be adjusted as necessary and provides flexibility for larger deployments.