VMware VCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) Limitations

•No Update Manager
•No Linked-Mode
•No support for the VSA (vSphere Storage Appliance)
•Only support for Oracle as the external database
•Embedded database, DB2, only supports 5 hosts and 50 VMs
•No support for vCenter Heartbeat

Windows is still required if you are running VUM and you can only use Oracle for large virtual environments… Those are probably the two biggest constraints.

It is very simple to implement as setting Vcenter Server Appliance up takes a couple of minutes. Import the OVF file, accept the EULA, select the correct database type which can be the embedded for very small SMB environements and start the vCenter service. Vcenter Server Appliance also includes a Syslog Collector service, Autodeploy and the Webclient.
It is available in VMware version 5.5 (the latest available at the time of this post). I have enjoyed working with 5.5 vCenter both the full installation and the appliance version based on and deployable from an OVF template. The web UI for center has been improved greatly and VMware is moving more towards full browser based client.

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