Summary

As with most IT products and architectures, there is no single solution that perfectly fits in every scenario. Just looking at vCenter Server, we have seen that there are quite a few deployment topologies available to us, ranging from the basic embedded deployment, with its unmatched ease of operation-but which lacks some advanced availability options and architectural flexibility-to the multi-site with PSC HA mode and vCenter Windows Failover Clustering, providing the most advanced option for HA and architectural flexibility while at the same time lacking basic functionality, such as a supported backup procedure and being quite complex in daily operations.

So the decision as to which deployment topology to choose will always be a compromise depending on the concrete requirements and priorities that have been defined for a concrete environment. A final design decision for a concrete vSphere environment may depend on whether a higher priority is granted to ease of operation while maintaining...