Data Center or Cluster

[gymiv]

Should i create a data center or cluster? I have 2 esxi 5 machines that are managed by vcenter. They will have approximatly 5-7 VM's between the 2. If putting both these machines in a cluster basically makes them like one machine, allowing them to share resources and enabling HA. Then wouldn't you want all your esxi machines on 1 domain under a cluster, allowing you alot more resources? If that is true then why would you want to just add a machine under data center? If i understand correctly this would seem like a waste of resources to me. I am trying to figure out the best config for my domain.  Can you help me understand better?

[JohnADCO]

Your data center decides your licensing.   So if you have licensing for 3 hosts, to use the licenses all the hosts have to be in the same datacenter.

I have to admit, I am not quite sure I understand the question.

[gymiv]

the question is why use a data center vs a cluster. I am interested in the difference between the two. I have not purchased licensing yet but will be. I am trying to figure out how i will be setting this up so i know what licensing to buy. But the most important thing i do not understand is should i just add vm's under the data center or should i create a cluster?

[JohnADCO]

Generally your datacetner is your cluster.     I have not seen it configured any other way?

[gymiv]

then why is there an option when you right click on datacenter to new cluster or new virtual machine?

[JohnADCO]

We don't have out 5.0 test system setup done yet.

In 4.1,  when I right click above my datacenter (cluster) I only have new datacenter as an option.

[gymiv]

When you right click on data center, not above, is when you get the options

[JohnADCO]

If you want / need HA and DRS you use the cluster option. We only wanted Vmotion and Svmotion so we never enabled HA or DRS so we just add our hosts under data center.

[gymiv]

Thanks thats what i thought. Just needed to make sure I was right.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

A datacenter is a logical grouping of hosts

"A virtual datacenter is a container for all the inventory objects required to complete a fully functional environment for operating virtual machines. You can create multiple datacenters to organize sets of environments. For example, you might create a datacenter for each organizational unit in your enterprise or create some datacenters for high performance environments and others for less demanding virtual machines."

If you're not using HA or DRS,  then you just create a datacenter and then add hosts.  For HA/DRS you need a cluster, but first have to create datacenter.