When installing VCenter 5.1 we have an option to do a local DB Express install or use a db on an existing supported DB OS such as SQL 2008. I've always used a local SQL express option and would like to continue that way but the installation documentation recommends this for only really small installs with 5 hosts and 50 VMs. This seems like a pretty strict limit. We currently have 5 hosts and 80 total VMs and I could see increasing that to perhaps 7 hosts and 100 VMs over the next 5 years. After installing VC 5.1 we will move hosts to ESXi 5.1 too.
-How hard are the above mentioned limits? Would we have a problem with a local db install and 7 hosts/100 VMs? Is anyone else here using the local db with host/vms that exceed these limits and do you have any issues? The instructions for setting up a db on a supported full fledged DB OS look pretty daunting and I prefer not to muck with our production SQL box unless it's really, really necessary.
-If we tried installing with the local db options and found it to be a problem down the road is it very hard or even possible to migrate the VC db to a remote full DB product?
Thanks for any insight you can provide.
Tim