NO ESX 5 will not work without RAID, please see the below information
ESXi Hardware Requirements
Make sure the host meets the minimum hardware configurations supported by ESXi 5.0.
Hardware and System Resources
To install and use ESXi 5.0, your hardware and system resources must meet the following requirements:
■ | Supported server platform. For a list of supported platforms, see the VMware Compatibility Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility. |
■ | ESXi 5.0 will install and run only on servers with 64-bit x86 CPUs. |
■ | ESXi 5.0 requires a host machine with at least two cores. |
■ | ESXi 5.0 supports only LAHF and SAHF CPU instructions. |
■ | ESXi supports a broad range of x64 multicore processors. For a complete list of supported processors, see the VMware compatibility guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility. |
■ | ESXi requires a minimum of 2GB of physical RAM. VMware recommends 8GB of RAM to take full advantage of ESXi features and run virtual machines in typical production environments. |
■ | To support 64-bit virtual machines, support for hardware virtualization (Intel VT-x or AMD RVI) must be enabled on x64 CPUs. |
■ | One or more Gigabit or 10Gb Ethernet controllers. For a list of supported network adapter models, see the VMware Compatibility Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility. |
■ | Any combination of one or more of the following controllers: ■ | Basic SCSI controllers. Adaptec Ultra-160 or Ultra-320, LSI Logic Fusion-MPT, or most NCR/Symbios SCSI. | ■ | RAID controllers. Dell PERC (Adaptec RAID or LSI MegaRAID), HP Smart Array RAID, or IBM (Adaptec) ServeRAID controllers. |
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■ | SCSI disk or a local, non-network, RAID LUN with unpartitioned space for the virtual machines. |
■ | For Serial ATA (SATA), a disk connected through supported SAS controllers or supported on-board SATA controllers. SATA disks will be considered remote, not local. These disks will not be used as a scratch partition by default because they are seen as remote. Note You cannot connect a SATA CD-ROM device to a virtual machine on an ESXi 5.0 host. To use the SATA CD-ROM device, you must use IDE emulation mode. |
Storage Systems
ESXi 5.0 supports installing on and booting from the following storage systems:
■ | SATA disk drives. SATA disk drives connected behind supported SAS controllers or supported on-board SATA controllers. Supported SAS controllers include: ■ | LSI1068E (LSISAS3442E) | ■ | LSI1068 (SAS 5) | ■ | IBM ServeRAID 8K SAS controller | ■ | Smart Array P400/256 controller | ■ | Dell PERC 5.0.1 controller |
Supported on-board SATA include: ■ | Intel ICH9 | ■ | NVIDIA MCP55 | ■ | ServerWorks HT1000 |
Note ESXi does not support using local, internal SATA drives on the host server to create VMFS datastores that are shared across multiple ESXi hosts. |
■ | Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disk drives. Supported for installing ESXi 5.0 and for storing virtual machines on VMFS partitions. |
■ | Dedicated SAN disk on Fibre Channel or iSCSI |
■ | USB devices. Supported for installing ESXi 5.0. For a list of supported USB devices, see the VMware Compatibility Guide at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility. |
