Let me be the naysayer, although the VMware reference architectures tell me I'm wrong. If you split your assets (in this case four hosts) into a 1 Host Mgt Cluster- 3 Host Prod Cluster, I see some deficiencies.

1) my mgt assets lose HA (at least lesser HA than if a single cluster regardless of total host count)
2) if my Prod workloads spike to more than 3 hosts of demand, they can't use the fourth host.
3) if my Mgt workloads spike to more than 1 host of demand, they are stuck too.

I agree it's easier to bring up a downed site if the mgt assets are easily located, but that's relatively rare and I can do that with DRS affinity.

If I can trust DRS, SIOC, NIOC, and Resource Pools, why not have the largest pool possible? I understand that a Mgt spike could impede production workloads, but if it's an important (and resource pool prioritized) workload, isn't that a correct operational decision?

Please help walk me to the light..

Hi Tim,

The management cluster doesn't have to be licensed with the same edition as production. But you might want to do that anyway for OPEX reasons.

If your management workloads are already virtual you won't need additional hosts. You'll just need to partition some of the existing hosts. As the management workloads are already consuming compute resources from your cluster.

You still need the same amount of net compute resources regardless to run management workloads. But by virtualizing them you can consolidate also. The business case should be the same as for other workloads. But with the additional reduced risk of having the separate management cluster and more predictable and isolated resources for your other VM's.

I would argue that you should have management separation in all environments. That might mean a management cluster of only a single host. This is still superior to any of the alternatives, including having a physical vCenter. Having a Management Cluster if 2 hosts is the ideal starting point. This is especially important for View as it gives clear separation of the management functions vs the production functions of running the desktops. Else your management functions will be taking away important resources from your desktops and your over commitment levels are likely to be very different between the two types of workloads. This is the reason that a Management Cluster is a key tenant of the View Pod Reference Architectures. Whether you have a management cluster or not your management systems will still consume exactly the same amount of resources, so why not separate them? It makes troubleshooting and operations much simpler. The smallest environment I've designed that had a management cluster was 4 hosts total. 3 hosts for production and one host for management. This cluster was for a financial application that needed to meet PCI compliance and have vCloud Networking and Security deployed. Without having logical and physical management separation the solution would not have been possible. This environment has since been expanded to include a second host in the management cluster as more management workloads have been added.