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Base ESXi 6.5 Install vs ESXi + vCenter VM?

dalekphalm
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I'm running ESXi 6.5 on my server hardware right now and I can access the GUI interface and pretty much do everything I think I need to (Managing VM's, datastores, even PCI Passthrough).

 

Is there any benefit to running a vCenter VM? What features does it add that the base ESXi install lacks? Is this even relevant in ESXi 6.5?

 

Note: I am not doing any failover or clustering. Just a single bare metal server.

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7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

clustering is the big featre to my knolege. No need to for a single server setup. I think it also works better with ad and large enviroments.

Well then, no vCenter for me! I actually like the ESXi web interface - it's a bit buggy, but it's laid out nicely. We use vCenter at work, and I find that some parts of it is very non-intuitive.

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Clustering as well as some other features like cloning a machine and so on for short.

 

If you only run one ESXi Host, you won't usually need a VSphere/VCenter Server. For cloning machines you can use the free VMWare Converter, jsut export a machine to the same host and import with another name.

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5 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Well then, no vCenter for me! I actually like the ESXi web interface - it's a bit buggy, but it's laid out nicely. We use vCenter at work, and I find that some parts of it is very non-intuitive.

vCenter 5, 5.5, 6 and 6.5 also have a web interface, the classic GUI application is being phased out.

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1 minute ago, leadeater said:

vCenter 5, 5.5, 6 and 6.5 also have a web interface, the classic GUI application is being phased out.

Yeah we use both the Web Interface and the GUI Application at work for vCenter.

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Just now, dalekphalm said:

Yeah we use both the Web Interface and the GUI Application at work for vCenter.

And I still hate the web client compared to the GUI app lol.

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