Best RAID configuration for esxi 5 install

[yanivc26]

Hi

I have HP DL360P with 8 sas disk.  The disks size  is 600 GB each one.

I want to insatall ESXi 5.5

I wonder if there is any advanage  to separate between the boot partiton and the data?

To install the boot on raid1 and the data (workstations)  on raid5..

OR

To configre raid5 only and to install  the boot on the same partition with the data.

I dont want to use ssd/usb boot drive.

THanks

Yaniv

[akkayyakapisett]

I recommend to use SD card if possible 4 GB.

As all together ESXi 5.5 needs is 1 GB of OS and 3 GB of scratch

Venkat

http://www.peeradmin.com

[joeshestak]

For ESXI installation, I would suggest you to create a virtual disk.

[john23]

If you are not planning to use usb, then no need to go for separate data and os virtual disk.

Selecting the raid group for ESXi depends on lot of things...

For ex: If you go for RAID 5, in disk failure cases, rebuilding will take lot of time. But you will get space as well data will we recoverable in case of disk failure...

Apply for other raid group..

Raid penalty as well play a role...so its better to go with your requirement... Performance, space and rebuilding will play role to select the raid group..

-A

[a_p_]

I agree with john23, there's absolutely no need to separate the system partitions from the data partitions. While booting, ESXi creates a RAM disk and runs in memory. It only writes configuration changes and logs to the boot disk. The space ESXi uses for the system partitions - if installed on disks - is approximately 5GB (see http://rickardnobel.se/esxi-5-0-partitions/) which contains a 4GB scratch partition. When installing ESXi on an USB/SD device, a 1GB device is sufficient, because a scratch partition will not be created on "slow" storage. In this case, a scratch location (i.e. a folder on a datastore) will be used.

The only reason why you may want/need to split the RAID group into logical volumes is explained in http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2006942. However, I'm not sure whether this is still the case with the P420 controller you most likely have in your host.

André

[dhanarajramesh]

better go for RAID 1 where you get good performance

[john23]

I was reading one blog where it has mentioned about IOPS and raid:

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/12/23/iops/