With the ISO mounted, you are ready to deploy. The installation is a two-stage process: deploying
| vCenter Size | vCPUs | RAM | Storage (for VCSA) | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Tiny (up to 10 hosts / 100 VMs) | 2 | 12 GB | 300 GB | | Small (up to 100 hosts / 1,000 VMs) | 4 | 19 GB | 340 GB | | Medium (up to 400 hosts / 4,000 VMs) | 8 | 28 GB | 560 GB | | Large (up to 1,000 hosts / 10,000 VMs) | 16 | 37 GB | 930 GB | | X-Large (up to 2,000 hosts / 35,000 VMs) | 24 | 56 GB | 1.65 TB |
Historically, vCenter could be installed on Windows Server. As of vSphere 7, VMware has moved to a "Appliance-only" deployment model. The download still includes files for both, but the industry standard and VMware recommendation is to deploy the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) , which is a hardened, pre-configured Linux-based virtual machine.