Platform Services Controller (PSC) Walkthrough

Platform Services Controller (PSC) is a component of the VMware Cloud Infrastructure Suite. PSC deals with identity management for administrators and applications that interact with the vSphere platform.  It is available on both the Windows vCenter Server ISO or within the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) ISO.

Key Features and Advantages:

• PSC 6.0 remains a multi-master model, as was introduced in vSphere 5.5 in the form of vCenter Single Sign-On.
• It can be deployed either in an Appliance-based or Windows-based flavor, both able to participate in multi-master replication. (With vSphere 5.x, the vCenter Server Appliance's embedded SSO was not supported to replicate with other SSO nodes)
• Both Appliance-based and Windows-based PSCs can interoperate with Appliance-based or Windows-based vCenter Servers.
• Handles the storing and generation of the SSL certificates within your vSphere environment.
• Handles the storing and replication of your VMware License Keys
• Handles the storing and replication of your permissions via the Global Permissions layer.
• It can handle the storing and replication of your Tags and Categories.
• It has a built-in feature for automatic replication between different, logical SSO sites.
• There is only one single default domain for the identity sources.

Complete list of components installed along with platform services controller are mentioned below VMware Identity Management Service

• VMware Appliance Management Service (only in Appliance-based PSC)
• VMware License Service
• VMware Component Manager
• VMware HTTP Reverse Proxy
• VMware Service Control Agent
• VMware Security Token Service
• VMware Common Logging Service
• VMware Syslog Health Service
• VMware Authentication Framework
• VMware Certificate Service
• VMware Directory Service

PSC 6.0 is supported with:

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vCenter Inventory Services
• VMware vSphere Web Client
• VMware Log Browser
• VMware NSX for vSphere
• VMware Site Recovery Manager
• VMware vCloud Air
• VMware vCloud Director
• VMware vRealize Automation Center
• VMware vRealize Orchestrator
• VMware vSphere Data Protection
• VMware vShield Manager

 Basically PSC can be deployed in 2 ways. 

• Embedded PSC
• External PSC 

We are going to Discuss in detail about PSC Deployment Model in coming post.

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