Software Requirements for the vCenter Server Appliance

The VMware vCenter Server appliance can be deployed on ESXi 6.5 hosts or later, or on vCenter Server instances 6.5 or later.

You can deploy the vCenter Server appliance using the GUI or CLI installer. You run the installer from a network client machine that you use to connect to the target server and deploy the appliance on the server. You can connect directly to an ESXi 6.5 host on which to deploy the appliance. You can also connect to a vCenter Server 6.5 instance to deploy the appliance on an ESXi host or DRS cluster that resides in the vCenter Server inventory.

For information about the requirements for network client machine, see System Requirements for the vCenter Server Installer.