--- title: "Deploy vCenter Server 6.5 with Load-Balanced External PSCs" canonical: "https://www.virtcloudrocks.com/space/VSPHTECH01/852117/Deploy%20vCenter%20Server%206.5%20with%20Load-Balanced%20External%20PSCs" format: markdown --- Scope The ultimate scope of those articles are to describe in detail how to Install a vCenter Server 6.5 with two External Platform Services Controllers (PSC) which will be load-balanced through a NSX LB. General Installing a vCenter Server creates the central point for configuring, provisioning, and managing virtualized IT environments. You have to install the vCenter Server software before you can add the hosts and data centers to be managed and monitored. There are two ways that you can install or deploy vCenter Server: vCenter on a single host, with an embedded VMware Platform Services Controller vCenter on multiple hosts, where the vCenter instance is on one host server and the Platform Services Controller is on a separate host server (with or without high availability elements) At least one Platform Services Controller is required to install vCenter Server, and in case that high availability is needed another Platform Services Controller can be deployed, and those PSCs can be balanced, e.g. either behind a physical LB or a virtual LB, (NSX). Furthermore, this architecture allows for common services to be separated from vCenter such that they can be shared among vCenter Server instances in the environment; for example, another vCenter server can be deployed and it can use the external PSC for SSO and other common services. Prerequisites 1 At least one ESXi host is needed to which we shall deploy both the PSC and vCenter Server appliance. In my case in my lab I run a host with ESXi 6.5.0 build 4564106 2 You need the download media of vCenter server; I have downloaded VCSA 6.5.0 build 5973321 As per below KB article, https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2149221 , vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 builds have been removed as of November 14, 2017 due to a deployment-impacting issue. To resolve this issue, you must upgrade to vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.0f or vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 Update 1c, or later. In my case I use one of the deprecated VCSA builds, since I want to test the patching that is proposed from VMware. Feel free to use latest supported version of vCenter server, in case that you don't want to follow the same version with me 3 Verify that the FQDN of the system where you will install vCenter Server and the Platform Services Controller is resolvable. To check that the FQDN is resolvable, type nslookup   at a command line prompt. If the FQDN is resolvable, the nslookup command returns the IP address and name of the domain controller machine. Additionally, verify that DNS reverse lookup returns an FQDN when queried using the IP address of the vCenter Server or the Platform Services Controller. Reverse lookup is implemented using PTR records. The installation, deployment and configuration process will be documented in a series of articles, which can be found to below links, Related Articles