ESXI - installation on pendrive or SSD?

[oSAlj]

Hi,

I have an HP ML110 Gen10 server with 64GB RAM and a RAID E208i-p controller.

I have 4x Samsung 860 Pro 256GB SSDs in RAID5 connected. 768GB

Today I would like to install and configure ESXI 7.0.2 HPE

Can the system be installed on this RAID5 and also configure the storage for VM on this RAID5?

Or is it better to connect the pendrive to the server's motherboard and install ESXI on this pendrive?

Please let me know 🙂

Happy FRIDAY!

[Giodomi]

Hello,

as suggested by documentation the Pendrive usb and sd card are deprecated:
https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2021/09/esxi-7-boot-media-consideration-vmware-technical-guidance.h....

As far I understood you have 768 Gb in total so according to the documentation the installation will just take 128gb for the ESXi and the rest could be used for storing the VM files.

https://core.vmware.com/resource/esxi-system-storage-changes#section5

[continuum]

Just my 2 cents from a recovery point of view.

Raid 5 + VMFS is a dangerous combination.
If you really want to use VMFS-volumes on a Raid5 make sure that all administrators read the raid-controller manual.
One incorrect move after a drive-failure and the volume can become unreadable.
Last ten years most phonecalls I received started with: after a powerfailure or after a diskreplacement on a raid 5 the vmfs-volume is toast ....

Ulli