When should you consider using an external Platform Services Controller (PSC)?

Using an external Platform Services Controller (PSC) is particularly advantageous when you need to scale your environment beyond a few hundred virtual machines (VMs). The PSC provides essential services such as identity management and licensing, allowing for enhanced scalability and centralized management of multiple vCenter Server instances. This separation of services is crucial in larger environments, as it helps to ensure that the workload is balanced and that the services can handle a greater volume of requests and data.

In scaled environments, an external PSC can provide a range of benefits, such as improved availability and redundancy, as it allows for the deployment of multiple PSC instances that can seamlessly failover. This setup is not just a matter of managing more VM instances; it’s about creating a robust architecture that can maintain performance and reliability as the number of VMs increases.

The other options do not align with the main reasons for deploying an external PSC. For instance, while integrating with other hypervisors or maintaining a single host setup might require considerations regarding architecture, these scenarios do not specifically benefit from the scalability that an external PSC offers. Similarly, performing backups of VM data focuses more on data management and backup solutions rather than the role of PSC within the vSphere environment. Therefore, selecting to deploy an external PSC when scaling