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warbux
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Best way to setup 6 1TB SATA drives for ESXi performance

Hi, this ESXi server needs to run a lot of different VMs at the same time and I am trying to figure out the best way to install the drives.

Should I setup RAID 10 and use that to install ESXI and VMs.

Then mirror the other two for the swap file.

or

Setup RAID 10 for ESXI and VMs then use the other two as JBOD drives and split the swap files up between those two drives?

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Rumple
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You can probably make due with SATA for a while provided you do get the hardware RAID card with a BBWC.

If you use a cheap sata controller or one without the batter Even RAID 10 is going to be pretty much useless after about 4 VM's.

I've build and run on those controllers at home and it just wasn't worth the power used to run the drives, even as RAID 10.

Ended up buying the battery off ebay for $150 and then it was usuable...

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golddiggie
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IF you really do care about performance, you'll use those 1TB SATA drives for something else and get some 15k rpm SAS drives and use a quality hardware RAID controller (with BBWC).

No matter what you do for the array, SATA drive performance is going to SUCK.

Of the two options you posted, the second would give you better performance, but still won't be all that good... Depending on the RAID controller, you could present three 1TB virtual drives to ESXi, creating three 1TB LUN's to use...

I'd still go with my first suggestion though... How many do you call 'a lot of different VMs'?? Are we talking about three or thirty VM's here?? Any more than a few VM's you'll be better off dumping the SATA for SAS drives...

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chadwickking
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Your first option is the best in my opinion. You want to be aware of disk alignment as well as you begin the install.

take a read at:

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/04/08/aligning-your-vms-virtual-harddisks/






Cheers,

Chad King

VCP-410 | Server+

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cwjking

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warbux
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Yea I know Sata wont give me the performance SAS will but these VMs do not generate a lot of IOPS and I spent most of of the budget on RAM and 5620 processors. Eventually I would like to run 50 or 60 windows XP desktops on here. I can always upgrade to SAS drives when I need to and then build a SAN w/ my SATA drives.

Option 1 is what I thought too.. I have read that article and will make sure to provision them the right way.

What about putting ESXi on a USB flash drive?

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chadwickking
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That is fine as well I know plenty of users/colleagues who like that approach. It is such a small footprint that it shouldn't matter. Just get the ISO from Vmware put it in the server - have the USB Key installed in the server at the time of installation and select as the target device. You could also See:http://www.vladan.fr/how-to-install-esxi-40-on-usb-memory-key/

Read the comments too but it hasnt changed at all.






Cheers,

Chad King

VCP-410 | Server+

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cwjking

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

Cheers, Chad King VCP4 Twitter: http://twitter.com/cwjking | virtualnoob.wordpress.com If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful
Rumple
Virtuoso
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You can probably make due with SATA for a while provided you do get the hardware RAID card with a BBWC.

If you use a cheap sata controller or one without the batter Even RAID 10 is going to be pretty much useless after about 4 VM's.

I've build and run on those controllers at home and it just wasn't worth the power used to run the drives, even as RAID 10.

Ended up buying the battery off ebay for $150 and then it was usuable...

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Dave_Mishchenko
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ESXi has next to no disk I/O requirements once it has booted so it doesn't matter really where you put that . If it's on the same array as a datastore, it's not a big deal. +1 on the comment about BBWC. If you do split arrays it'll come down to how well you think you can split I/O. Often when I/O is split you end up with unbalanced I/O and thus less overall performance. If you go with a single array then all drives contribute equally to I/O.




Dave

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LucasAlbers
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you might find some desktop sizing doc's useful:

http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10107

storage considerations for desktop deployment, in regards to vmware view, but equally applicable:

http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/1096

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