Brand new install - Dell R710 and ESXi 4

[allenflame]

I just got in a new server and was about to install ESXi 4 on it. The server has 6 (1TB) drives in it. How do I need to split up the raid volumes so I can use as much space as possible? I tried just 1 drive and ended up having less than 1 GB available. Thanks for your help.

Thanks

[Troy_Clavell]

the max LUN size for ESXi is 2TB minus 512B. I would setup a few 500GB Raid Volumes

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_config_max.pdf

[allenflame]

so setup 2 tb volumes? and then some 500g?

[Troy_Clavell]

I prefer smaller LUNs, but either or.

[allenflame]

so you suggest like (8) 500gb instead of the larger (2) 2TB or (4) 1TB?

[Troy_Clavell]

so you suggest like (8) 500gb instead of the larger (2) 2TB or (4) 1TB?

Yes, I like the idea of (8) 500GB LUNs. But, that is just my opinion.

Here's something worth looking at as well.

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/06/23/vmfslun-size/

[Rumple]

First rules is to try and keep no more then 10-15 vm's per volume (due to scsi reservations on the lun).

Therefore on a single R710, if it as 4xquad core cpu's thats 16 cores and you can typically get 3-5 vm's per core out of a system...

If you ran 48 vm's on the system, 4x1tb vmfs volumes would give you about 12 vm's so still within the range of acceptable configuration.

Of course I'd suspect if you got 48 vm's on there with 6x1tb drives of SATA disk you will hit the IOPS wall long before you ever got 48 vm's running on there. One SQL 2005 and Exchange 2007 server along with a DC, File Server etc will probably kill that disk...