Hi, Ive got a Tyan Server im about to install ESXi on.
I was wondering if anyone has used an Industrial Flash Module as a boot drive for ESXi?
My dilemma is i have 6 SATA channels i want to use for drives for VM space. I also have a single IDE channel.
I can get Industrial IDE Flash modules at 2GB and 4GB with good speeds (70M/s) and 2M write cycles.
How big of drive would i need to just install ESXi on to so that i can leave my SATA for VM's?
Thanks.
As David mentions with an IDE device you could likely install ESXi but it wouldn't be a supported option and it will come down to what sort of controller your server has.
Dave
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Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL.
You'll need 1 GB of space (after the install make sure to set the scratch location in advanced options) and you should be using USB 2.0 certified flash devices. ESXi creates a RAM drive when it loads so most of the writes it does are to the RAM drive and not flash so I wouldn't worry about the disk load of the ESXi install partitions.
Dave
VMware Communities User Moderator
Now available - vSphere Quick Start Guide
Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL.
I'd suggest if you can, use the solid state drive. usb flash have certain usage read/write limit.
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/fdm80sqi2g
Thats the particular Flash module i am looking at using.
I dont particularly like using USB devices for anything that requires reliability.
Thanks for the size information. That was what i was after,
Most major server manufacturers Dell, HP, IBM, Fujitsu, etc. offer ESXi preinstalled on USB or SD cards. ESXi was designed to run from USB/Flash. Since as Dave said there is very little writing to the usb disk, you shouldn't need to worry about reliability.
Maybe true, but not really true for upgrading. I botched my ESXi3 3.5 trying to upgrade it to ESXi4.
I now abandon the "embedded" usbflash and luckily have spare hdd on the blade and install ESXi4 on it. So happy now.
I have had 1 or two USB upgrades 3.5 to 4 fail due to a partition issue. It took 30 seconds to replace the USB stick with a new one and on my way. Most of my USB upgrades went just fine.
I'm not sure the IDE flash module will be a supported install.
As David mentions with an IDE device you could likely install ESXi but it wouldn't be a supported option and it will come down to what sort of controller your server has.
Dave
VMware Communities User Moderator
Now available - vSphere Quick Start Guide
Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL.
Its a NVidia MCP55 controller for SATA and IDE.
Its a Tyan S2927A2NRF-E motherboard.
I dont have any internal USB ports, only pin headers.
Im also not sure if the board can boot from a USB device. I havent tried it yet, because its something im not fond of doing.
If the motherboard has pin headers you can get a USB dom from the same site you were looking at the IDE dom.
Unless this is a really old tyan mb it will boot from usb. I use several tyan servers as routers and run from USB.
What sort of disk performance will you require. If it's light you'll be fine but if you have some heavier I/O VMs then the MCP controller isn't going to scale too high.
Dave
VMware Communities User Moderator
Now available - vSphere Quick Start Guide
Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL.
Echoing the above, in my testing I find the MCP55 maxes out at about 40 MB/s when running in ESXi.
Please award points to any useful answer.
Thanks for all the information.
Any experience with an LSI 3081E-R with the IT firmware?
Thats my alternative to using the MCP55.
I wish i had more points to hand out, you guys are being incredibly helpful.
Thanks again.