Methods for installing vCenter Server 5.5

Products

VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article provides high-level information about the methods of installing vCenter Server 5.5

Notes:

This article assumes that you have read the vSphere Installation and Setup Guide. This guide contains definitive information. If there is a discrepancy between the guide and this article, assume that the guide is correct.
Because each environment is different, many installation decisions require knowledge and understanding beyond the scope of this article. For more detailed information about your installation, see the vSphere Installation and Setup Guide.
Review the VMware vSphere 5.5 Release Notes for known issues or special installation notes.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x

Resolution

What is vCenter Single Sign-On and how it affects vCenter Server

Introduced in vSphere 5.1, vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO) is the identity and authentication managing component for your vSphere 5.5 implementation. This authentication component makes the VMware Cloud Infrastructure Platform more secure by allowing the vSphere software components to communicate with each other through a secure token service (STS) that facilitates the exchange of authentication information. This offloads the authentication requests from both the local operating system users and Microsoft Active Directory users, previously handled by vCenter Server to SSO. SSO now handles all of the token requests and admission. Thus, vCenter Server only needs to handle the environmental permissions while accepting the secure tokens from SSO. For more information about vCenter Single-Sign On, see:

vCenter Single Sign-on 5.5 Frequently Asked Questions (2057799)
Comparing the behavior of vCenter Single Sign On with earlier versions of vCenter Server (2032135)
The vCenter Single Sign On Overview section in the vSphere API/SDK Documentation Guide.

Further, with the use of SSO, you now have the capability to add OpenLDAP users to your vCenter Server 5.5 with the correct identity source configuration. With the ability to use Active Directory and OpenLDAP users for authentication, the use of local operating system users become far less necessary.

Note: If the machine on which you are installing vCenter Server 5.5 already has vCenter Server installed, consider upgrading rather than performing a fresh installation of vCenter Server. To keep your existing vCenter Server configuration by performing an upgrade, see:

Installation options for new vCenter Server implementations

vSphere 5.5 provides two methods to install vCenter Server:

Simple Install - Installs all of the vSphere 5.5 components on a single system
Custom Component Install - Installs all vSphere components separately by allowing you to choose the location of each service in your environment

Simple Install

The Simple Install method installs vCenter Single Sign-On, vSphere Web Client, Inventory Service, and finally vCenter Server all on the same system and is often recommend for small deployments of vSphere 5.5.

Custom Component Install

Custom Component Install follows the same order as the Simple Install method: vCenter Single Sign-On, vSphere Web Client, vCenter Inventory Service, and vCenter Server. However, each component can be installed on a different system within the environment to allow for resource optimization and performance tuning for each vSphere component. This is often recommended for medium to large deployment of vSphere 5.5.

For more information, see the Hardware Requirements for vCenter Server, the vSphere Web Client, vCenter Inventory Service, and vCenter Single Sign-On section in the vSphere Installation and Setup Guide.

After the first installation of SSO is configured for your environment, you can connect multiple vCenter Servers to the same SSO instance using the Custom Component Install method. Subsequent installations of vCenter Server do not need their own SSO and a single SSO instance can service your entire vSphere environment. However, each instance of vCenter Server does require its own vCenter Inventory Service instance.