What is vCenter 6.0 Appliance?

This is linux based pre-configured VM for vCetner operations developed by VMware. You can download this appliance from VMware Marketplace portal. 

Below are the characteristics of vCenter 6 appliance.

• Runs on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11, Update 3 
• Can be used to manage ESXi 5.5 and later ESXi versions only. No prior versions can be managed from vCenter 6.0. 
• Is prepackaged with a PostgreSQL embedded database in you do not want use external Oracle database. (No SQL is supported for linux based vCenter). 
• In this version, PostgreSQL can support up to 1,000 hosts and 10,000 running virtual machines and 15,000 registered virtual machines. 

• External Oracle database can be used which can also support up to 1,000 hosts and 10,000 running virtual machines and 15,000 registered virtual machines. 
• Is equipped with the vCenter Server Appliance console, used for troubleshooting and configuration. 
• Supports Single sign on.
• Can be configured for linked mode in this version. Till vsphere 5.5, linked mode is only available for windows based vCenter server.