VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture

vCenter main components

This section is a short introduction to the main components of a vCenter installation. The vCenter Server is the central management platform for administering and automating the vSphere infrastructure, consisting of basic virtual machines and ESXi hosts.

• A vSphere domain: Sometimes referred to as an SSO domain, the vSphere domain basically provides a common VMware directory service, which encompasses the vCenter SSO LDAP directory (the SSO users and groups) and references to external directories (for example) and, typically, Active Directory. With vSphere, this domain name can be configured as something other than the default domain name, but should not be named identically to other; externally connected directory ...