vCenter Server 6 and the vPostgres database

Ivo Beerens
Date : March 25, 2015
Categories : vcenter-2 ,VMware
Tags : database ,vcenter

In vCenter Server 5.x the embedded SQL Express database supports a maximum of 5 hosts and 50 Virtual Machines. With vCenter Server 6 the embedded database is changes from SQL Express to a vPostgress database. The vPostgres database supports a maximum of 20 hosts and 200 VMs. In comparison the vPostgres database on the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 6 supports 1000 hosts and 10000. When upgrading or fresh installing vCenter Server 6 make sure to note the following items:

When upgrading to vCenter Server 6.0, the Microsoft SQL Express database is migrated to a vPostgres database.
Oracle, SQL Standard and Enterprise database editions will not be migrated to vPostgres.
It is possible to upgrade without migrating the SQL database to vPostgres. Make sure you have a supported SQL database before upgrading. More information can be found here, link .
When uninstalling vCenter Server 6 the embedded VMware vPostgres database will be removed with all the data! More information can be found here, link .
How to backup and restore the vPostgres database there is a Python script available. This script can be found here, link .
VMware vSphere Update Manager can’t use the embedded vPostgres database! For VMware vSphere Update Manager you need a Microsoft SQL (Express) database. When combining the vCenter Server, PSC and VUM on one server, two different databases engines are used. This looks like this: