What Do YOU Have ESXi Installed On?

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MikhailCompo

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Feb 14, 2017
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So i have read some people install to USB flash drives, some to SD cards, some to the same HDD that their Datastore uses.

Is the disks performance important?
What size is future proof?
What is best?

Thank you please.
 

Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
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Datacenter 2 x 300gb 10k sas disks mirrored (practically free in the bundle from vendor)
No datastore as it's all on SAN,vSAN, or other local disk/ssd.

USB / as-cards can and does easily break, sata DOM is a better idea.

Home use can also just partition your SSD and use rest for data store.

If plenty of free ports grab some smaller cheap ssd and mirror.
 
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Tom5051

Active Member
Jan 18, 2017
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At home I would not bother spending money on anything other than a small USB3 memory key to install the host OS onto. It loads into memory so performance is not really a factor. In production, generally use something more reliable and expensive.
 

Peanuthead

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Jun 12, 2015
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Use USB at home. Work is a mixed bag of mirrored drives, USB, and mirrored SD cards in dell servers
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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Intel dc s3500 80gb here, drop dead simple/reliable.
Yep. Same here.

Also some SATADOM and USB, but quality USB drives cost around the same as the S3500 80GB so it's really a matter of available connections.... SataDOM = $ but very nice!!
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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I'll go against popular opinion here and say I've been running ESXi on 8GB USB 2.0 drives both at home and in production on 40+ servers for many years and never had a single problem. As @Tom5051 pointed out ESXi gets loaded into RAM so the performance is not dependent on the disk you install it on.
 

Peanuthead

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Jun 12, 2015
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I don't disagree. I like Dell's mirrored SD card option when available. Else USB or PXE boot work just fine.
 

dwright1542

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Dec 26, 2015
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USB Mostly, some Dell dual SD. USB's have failed though. I mainly do hyperconverged setups, so bays are at a premium.
 

pricklypunter

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Nov 10, 2015
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Canada
USB for ESXi plus SSD for Datastore at home, a mix of that and mirrored SD cards in the field :)

Never had an issue firing up ESXi from either USB, SD or SATADOM, nor can I honestly say I see much of a performance advantage either way. Obviously if you go the USB/ SD Card route, you don't want your Hypervisor on a $2.99 Chinese special ;):p
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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Don't worry about performance of USB or spinning disks etc, so what it takes 20 seconds every other month extra for a restart.
Dual SD card from dell sounds like a nice cheap good solution.
 
Dec 30, 2016
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ESXi simply uses the device you install it on to boot the hypervisor into memory. Performance doesn't matter much. If you don't have a datastore on the local device, you can even yank the drive while ESXi is booted and it will continue to function (though you can't make changes since there's no persistent media to save it to).

A 8GB USB, SD device, or boot LUN is just fine.
 

axemann

New Member
Jul 7, 2013
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I've run it on everything from USB to SSD to SAN-boot (not stateless, though). Currently running it on USB in an AIO FreeNAS setup at home since I had to decommission my C6100 space-heater. :-/


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

Rand__

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Mar 6, 2014
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Used to have it on USB, but whenever I connected to vcenter (@homelab) I'd get issues soon thereafter, so now I am on old intel ssds (320)
 

Diavuno

Active Member
bit late, but here is my $.02

I used to use USB drives on all hosts, i'd say 75% of them are 8GB 2.0 drives. mostly lexar from a bulk buy I did.
I found myself or clients knocking into them and breaking the little suckers, zero failures outside of those.
I switched to supertalent minis that had a huge failure rate.
I then switched to sandisk Fit or the similar samsung in 16GB and have been happy with those, again no failures.

As SSD's have become cheaper I too have started switching.

Only a few exceptions like my big storage boxes... they are X8DTN+ and bays are a premium (3x 846)

They will be using the internal usb headers in a mirror. (each board has 2 type A headers)
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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bit late, but here is my $.02

I used to use USB drives on all hosts, i'd say 75% of them are 8GB 2.0 drives. mostly lexar from a bulk buy I did.
I found myself or clients knocking into them and breaking the little suckers, zero failures outside of those.
I switched to supertalent minis that had a huge failure rate.
I then switched to sandisk Fit or the similar samsung in 16GB and have been happy with those, again no failures.

As SSD's have become cheaper I too have started switching.

Only a few exceptions like my big storage boxes... they are X8DTN+ and bays are a premium (3x 846)

They will be using the internal usb headers in a mirror. (each board has 2 type A headers)
Is there anything you're doing to mirror them? IE: hardware mirror like the SD card device
Or is it a setup option when installing when 2x drives are present?

Seems like 2x USB mirrored would be great if it's a simple thing to get done without introducing more failure points (hardware for them to mirror).
 

Diavuno

Active Member
Is there anything you're doing to mirror them? IE: hardware mirror like the SD card device
Or is it a setup option when installing when 2x drives are present?

Seems like 2x USB mirrored would be great if it's a simple thing to get done without introducing more failure points (hardware for them to mirror).
for the storage boxes Im playing with its currently just a soft mirror with freenas
 

leonroy

Member
Oct 6, 2015
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I've used Sandisk Cruzer drives for boot but I've had a few corrupt drives after a few years use so now I just use a SATA DOM or a cheap SSD for boot.

My personal server has a HP P410i RAID controller with a 1GB flash write cache and 4x 900GB SAS 2.5" drives in a RAID 10 configuration.

ESXi is very sensitive to disk latency, especially under heavy load so would strongly recommend a BBU if using RAID or a flash write cache. RAID 10 is essential for good write IOPS.

Just be sure to keep your VM files and boot volume on separate disks in case your RAID array craps itself.