Specifications

Table 2‑5. Minimum Hardware Requirements for vCenter Server (Continued)
vCenter Server Hardware Requirement
Memory The amount of memory needed depends on your vCenter
Server configuration.
n
If vCenter Server is installed on a different host
machine than vCenter Single Sign-On and vCenter
Inventory Service, 4GB of RAM are required.
n
If vCenter Server, vCenter Single Sign-On and vCenter
Inventory Service are installed on the same host
machine (as with vCenter Simple Install), 10GB of
RAM are required.
Memory requirements are higher if the vCenter Server
database runs on the same machine as vCenter Server.
vCenter Server includes several Java services: VMware
VirtualCenter Management Webservices (tc Server),
Inventory Service, and Profile-Driven Storage Service.
When you install vCenter Server, you select the size of
your vCenter Server inventory to allocate memory for these
services. The inventory size determines the maximum JVM
heap settings for the services. You can adjust this setting
after installation if the number of hosts in your
environment changes. See the recommendations in
Table 2-7.
Disk storage The amount of disk storage needed for the vCenter Server
installation depends on your vCenter Server configuration.
n
If vCenter Server is installed on a different host
machine than vCenter Single Sign-On and vCenter
Inventory Service, 4GB are required.
n
If vCenter Server, vCenter Single Sign-On and vCenter
Inventory Service are installed on the same host
machine (as with vCenter Simple Install), at least
40-60GB of free disk space are required after
installation, depending on the size of your inventory.
You should provide more space to allow for future
growth of your inventory. For guidelines about the
disk space required for vCenter Single Sign-On and
Inventory Service, see Table 2-3 and Table 2-4
Disk storage requirements are higher if the vCenter Server
database runs on the same machine as vCenter Server,
depending on the size of those databases.
In vCenter Server 5.x, the default size for vCenter Server
logs is 450MB larger than in vCenter Server 4.x. Make sure
the disk space allotted to the log folder is sufficient for this
increase.
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Express disk Up to 2GB free disk space to decompress the installation
archive. Approximately 1.5GB of these files are deleted
after the installation is complete.
Network speed 1Gbps
NOTE Installing vCenter Server on a network drive or USB flash drive is not supported.
For the hardware requirements of your database, see your database documentation. The database
requirements are in addition to the vCenter Server requirements if the database and vCenter Server run on
the same machine.
Chapter 2 System Requirements
VMware, Inc. 19