Orchestrator consists of a server component and a client component. You can install the Orchestrator components on the machine on which vCenter Server is installed or on a separate machine. To improve performance, install the Orchestrator server component on a separate machine.

After you install or upgrade Orchestrator standalone, you must start the Orchestrator Configuration service, and configure Orchestrator by using the Orchestrator configuration interface.

You can install the Orchestrator configuration server on 64-bit Windows machines only. The Orchestrator client can run on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows machines.

To install Orchestrator, you must be either a local Administrator or a domain user that is a member of the Administrators group.

You can install and upgrade Orchestrator during the vCenter Server installation or upgrade. When you install vCenter Server 5.1, Orchestrator 5.1 is silently installed on your system as an additional component and requires no further configuration. To use Orchestrator, you must start the Orchestrator Server service and then start the Orchestrator client. Any user from the vCenter Server administrator group that you have provided during the vCenter Server installation, is an Orchestrator administrator. If you need to change the default configuration settings, you must first start the Orchestrator Configuration service, and change the settings by using the Orchestrator configuration interface.

For information about the vCenter Server software and hardware requirements, prerequisites, and installation steps, see vSphere Installation and Setup.

For information about upgrading vCenter Server, see vSphere Upgrade.

After you upgrade vCenter Server and Orchestrator, you must reimport the SSL certificate for the licensed vCenter Server and start the Orchestrator server. For more information about importing the vCenter Server SSL certificate, see Import the vCenter Server SSL Certificate.