vCenter Server Virtual Appliance (vCSA) is the future. If you are still running the Windows-based vCenter, it's time to migrate to the appliance with vSphere 6.5.
Since vSphere 6.0, the appliance offers the same feature and scale as the windows based vCenter. vSphere 6.5 adds an X-Large deployment size, the update manager and a fully supported migration assistant to the appliance.
VCSA6 Enhancements
- Supports up to 2000 ESXi Hosts and 35.000 Virtual Machines
- Guided Installer (Interactive Installer, instead of OVF Template)
- Robust deployment (Separate Deployment and Configuration to prevent failed deployments
- Migration Assistant (Migrate vCenter Server 5.5 or 6.0 for Windows to vCenter Server Appliance)
- Native High Availability
- VMware Update Manager
- Built-In Backup+Restore
- Improved Appliance Management
- HTML5-based vSphere Client
- Photon OS (Replaces SUSE Enterprise 11)
VCSA 6.0 Deployment Sizes:
| # Hosts | # VMs | VCSA vCPU | VCSA Memory | VCSA Disk (Default) | VCSA Disk (Large) | VCSA Disk (X-Large) | |
| Tiny | 10 | 100 | 2 | 10 GB | 250 GB | 775 GB | 1650 GB |
| Small | 100 | 1000 | 4 | 16 GB | 290 GB | 820 GB | 1700 GB |
| Medium | 400 | 4000 | 8 | 24 GB | 425 GB | 925 GB | 1805 GB |
| Large | 1000 | 10000 | 16 | 32 GB | 640 GB | 990 GB | 1870 GB |
| X-Large | 2000 | 35000 | 24 | 48 GB | 980 GB | 1030 GB | 1910 GB |
VCSA Configuration Maximum
| 5.1 | 5.5 | 6.0 | 6.5 | |
| # Hosts | 5 | 100 | 1000 | 2000 |
| # VMs | 50 | 3000 | 10000 | 35000 |
What about Link mode to have 2 or more vCenters showing under one screen to manage all under one login?
That was there in vSphere 6.0 (And even 5.x with Windows based Linked Mode)