5.6

Hosts Guests Est. Daily Change Data Retention in Days Data Size
25 250 10% 15 3GB
50 500 10% 15 6GB
250 2500 10% 15 30GB
Table 2–3. VCMDatabase Sizing per vCenter Server Instance
The best practice in production environments is to have the Managing Agent process requests for a single
vCenter Server. Dedicate one Managing Agent machine for each vCenter Server. In a single vCenter
Server instance environment, the VCM Collector can be the Managing Agent.
A single Managing Agent can manage multiple vCenter Server instances depending on your collection
schedules and when potential job latency is not an issue, such as when a single Managing Agent must
process multiple requests serially. A single Managing Agent can manage multiple vCenter Server instances
as long as only one vCenter Server is collected at a time.
When job latency is not a problem, and depending on your collection schedules, you might dedicate a
single Managing Agent for every five vCenter Server instances or 100 hosts. You could dedicate one
Managing Agent to a vCenter Server that manages 100 hosts, or a collection of four vCenter Server
instances that each manage 10 hosts could share a Managing Agent.
Hardware and Disk Requirements By Number of Managed Machines
Use the Minimum Hardware Requirements and Minimum Disk Configuration Requirements tables to
determine your hardware and disk configuration requirements for a single-tier server installation.
Use the total number of managed machines from the Sizing Worksheet to locate your environment size
(1–1000, 1000–2000, 2000–5000, or more). If you have more than 5000 machines in your environment,
contact VMware Technical Support to help you determine your hardware requirements.
If you run SQLServer on a virtual machine, see Microsoft SQL Server on VMware Best Practices Guide at
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/sql_server_best_practices_guide.pdf. If you run SQL Server in a Hyper-
V environment, see Best Practices and Performance Considerations for Running SQL Server 2008 in a Hyper-V
Environment on the Microsoft Web site.
The requirements listed in the following tables are based on the following assumptions.
n
Daily VCM collections using the default filter set with additional Microsoft AD security descriptors
collected using VCM for AD.
n
15 days retention of change data.
n
Simple recovery mode only.
n
Daily VCM Patching collections.
n
No applications other than VCM are running on your server.
VCM for AD collections cause the TempDB database to grow significantly. If you have a fully populated
Microsoft Active Directory and plan to perform frequent AD collections, increase your hardware
requirements.
Longer data retention, additional WMI, registry filters, and custom information collections also add to the
requirements.
The following table provides hardware requirements for a single-tier server installation of VCM. If you
are installing VCM in a two-tier or three-tier environment, approximate sizing requirements are provided
in the VMware Knowledge Base. See http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2033894.
Hardware Requirements for Collector Machines
VMware, Inc.
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