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Table Of Contents
You can install vCenter Server on a Windows virtual machine or physical
server, or deploy the vCenter Server Appliance. The
vCenter Server Appliance is a preconfigured Linux-based virtual machine
optimized for running vCenter Server and the vCenter Server components.
You can deploy the vCenter Server Appliance on ESXi hosts 5.5 or later, or
on vCenter Server instances 5.5 or later.
Starting with vSphere 6.0, all prerequisite services for running
vCenter Server and the vCenter Server components are bundled in the
VMware Platform Services Controller. You can deploy vCenter Server with
an embedded or external Platform Services Controller, but you must always
install or deploy the Platform Services Controller before installing or
deploying vCenter Server. See the vCenter Server Installation and Setup
documentation for details about setting up this configuration.
vCenter Single Sign-On A service that is part of the vCenter Server management infrastructure. The
vCenter Single Sign-On authentication service makes the VMware cloud
infrastructure platform more secure by allowing the various vSphere
software components to communicate with each other. The vCenter Single
Sign-On authentication service uses a secure token exchange mechanism
instead of requiring each component to authenticate a user separately with
a directory service like Active Directory.
When you install vCenter Single Sign-On, the following components are
deployed.
STS (Security
Token Service)
STS certificates enable a user who has logged on
through vCenter Single Sign-On to authenticate to
any vCenter service that vCenter Single Sign-On
supports. The STS service issues Security
Assertion Markup Language (SAML) tokens. These
security tokens represent the identity of a user in
each of the vCenter Single Sign-On identity
sources.
Administration
server
The administration server allows users with vCenter
Single Sign-On administrator privileges to configure
the vCenter Single Sign-On service and manage
users and groups from the vSphere Client. Initially,
only the user administrator@vsphere.local has
these privileges.
vCenter Lookup
Service
vCenter Lookup Service contains topology
information about the vSphere infrastructure,
enabling vSphere components to connect to each
other securely. Unless you are using Simple Install,
vCenter Server and Host Management
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