By using vCenter Single Sign-On, the vSphere components communicate with each other through a secure token exchange mechanism, instead of requiring each component to authenticate a user separately with a directory service like Active Directory. The vCenter Single Sign-On authentication service provides secure authentication services to the vSphere software components. Services Installed with VMware Platform Services Controller vCenter Single Sign-On Platform Services Controller services run as child processes of the VMware Service Lifecycle Manager service.

The vCenter Server Appliance also contains the VMware vSphere Update Manager Extension service. vCenter Server for Windows also contains the VMware vSphere Syslog Collector. The vCenter Server group of services contains vCenter Server, vSphere Web Client, vSphere Auto Deploy, and vSphere ESXi Dump Collector.The VMware Platform Services Controller group of infrastructure services contains vCenter Single Sign-On, License service, Lookup Service, and VMware Certificate Authority.The following components are included in the vCenter Server and vCenter Server Appliance installations: When you install vCenter Server with an external Platform Services Controller, or deploy the vCenter Server Appliance with an external Platform Services Controller, vCenter Server and the vCenter Server components are deployed on one system, and the services included in the Platform Services Controller are deployed on another system.

When you install vCenter Server with an embedded Platform Services Controller, or deploy the vCenter Server Appliance with an embedded Platform Services Controller, vCenter Server, the vCenter Server components, and the services included in the Platform Services Controller are deployed on the same system. VCenter Server provides a centralized platform for management, operation, resource provisioning, and performance evaluation of virtual machines and hosts.

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