vSAN 2 node Deployment Design Validation

[JQware]

Hi,

We are planning to deploy 2 vsan ready nodes 1 witness node and vcenter to a standalone startup office. 
I have attached the design for your reference.
Regarding the placement of the vcenter, it was recommended to us to install it on the external esxi host together with the witness.

Question 1: Would it be possible to have the vCenter appliance reside on the VSAN cluster instead of the external host
Question 2: Does placing vCenter on the VSAN cluster design supported by VMware
Question 3: What is the pro and cons in deploying vCenter on the external host or inside the VSAN cluster

Diagram

Regards,

JF

 

[Duncan Epping]

Hi,

1. Yes, this is possible
2. Yes, this is supported
3. In the case of a failure of one of the two "datahosts" the vCenter would need to be restarted, but at least it can be restarted.

In many cases people remotely manage these 2-node designs and they have a central datacenter with 1 vCenter managing many 2-node configs. But what you are describing is also full supported, and I don't see a reason for not doing this.

[TheBobkin]

, just to add to what Duncan said above with my opinion being from the support side of things:

"Question 3: What is the pro and cons in deploying vCenter on the external host or inside the VSAN cluster"

With vCenter running on the vSAN cluster, If you have any issues in your cluster that impair the vCenter or make it unavailable then it won't be as simple to troubleshoot these as you won't have Skyline Health nor vSphere alarms available. Pros would include having better redundancy and availability (assuming you were just going to run it on local-VMFS with no redundancy).