I've been looking for a while at a geographically dispersed vCenter Installation into an existing vSphere 5.1 environment. There are a number of different domains that are isolated from each other but the underlying hosts at each site can see each other. Some of the more remote sites will run lights-out and un-manned. They ideally want a single pane of glass administration. The newer features in vCenter 5.5 make this a bit easier, and I'm re-thinking my approach. I'm now thinking either a central pair of primary/secondary servers with Heartbeat and each of the sites in a separate datacenter in vCenter, or more likely, a multi-site vCenter installation. However, what I'd like to know, and I'm not 100% sure from reading mountains of documentation, is can I run without SSO hooking into AD, as each site has it's own separate AD, or since vCenter is now site-aware, could I run it in linked mode? The domains have no trusts between each other by design. Not my design, btw! If I can use Linked Mode - which looks a bit more of a viable option in 5.5, that would make like a lot easier and gives the single pane (or pain!) that is required.
I'd like to use the new appliance now the limitations have been lifted a bit, but the lack of multi-site is putting me off a bit. Well, ok, quite a lot.
Any advice/help will be very much appreciated.