Hi community,
I use one local disk just as temporary backup, and for various OS installation-images. It is attached to raid-controller, but not used in raid-arrays, just as JBOD-type (passed through the controller to ESXi as single disk). It is formated as vm-storage but there are no VM-files there. In other words, it is not used frequently, not more than once a week for about 30min. Sometimes it is not actively used for a few weeks.
I think it does not make sense to let this particular disk run 24/7 (useless power consumption, heat emission, etc), so I would like to let it spin down, when not being used. And the question is how to do it.
Raid-controller can take care of it, but as it is typical for LSI-controllers, not when disk is used as JBOD. Can ESXi itself spin down this particular local disk? I think smartd could do it...
Or should I rather create one more raid0-array with just this single disk (yes, it is possible) so that raid-controller could then spin this "raid0" array down on its own?
If I do not find ESXi-solution, I'll be forced to do it that way. But there is one disadvantage: JBOD-disk is just a disk like any other. You can attach it to any other controller with the same interface and still be able to read data (i.e. in case of raid-controller failure). But once I make raid0-array (even consisting of just one disk), its format is changed, and is no more readable on any other controller...