From time to time topic about MSCS and vCenter server comeback in community discussion and in projects which I’m working on. There is a lot of misunderstanding around it so I would like to clarify here few things.
Officially vCenter server it is NOT supported on third-party solution such as, Microsoft Cluster Services, Veritas Cluster Solution and others.
You may choose to protect VMware vCenter Server using third-party clustering solutions including, but not limited to, MSCS (Microsoft Cluster Services) and VCS (Veritas Cluster Services). VMware does not certify these third-party solutions.
[box type=”info”] http://kb.vmware.com/1024051[/box]
What does it mean ? It mean that if you want, you can cluster vCenter servers application using third-party cluster services and it will be working but if you get into trouble with vCenter server (performance, configuration etc.) you will have to solve it by yourself.
Anyway, my recommendation is use vCenter server as a virtual machine and it will gain a lot from vSphere HA, DRS features. There are some use cases when vCenter server must run on physical hardware in that case use vCenter Heartbeat which is official solution to provide full HA (on hardware and software level) for vCenter server.
If you want to learn more about vCenter server on a Virtual machine check my article
[box type=”info”] vCenter server on virtual machine [/box]
