Install Location Best Practice

[denonsix1]

I am going to be installing ESXi on a server (for connection with a Vcenter).

It has 2 Raid 5 Sets (1 TB of Fast SAS Disks, and 1 TB of Regular Sata)

I was planning on installing and running ESXi off of the SAS Fast drives and still using these drives as part of the VMFS Datastore location (as well as the sata drives).

However, a colleague noted that it was a best practice to not install ESXi on the same disks as you will be using for VMFS datastores. Instead he suggested I install ESXi to an external USB flash drive and boot off of that, leaving the hard disks completely separate.

Is this a best practice or simply unnecessary?

Thanks in advance...

[a_p_]

It is possible to install ESXi on USB/SD media. However, since you have disks in the system, I'd suggest you present the SAS RAID5 as two logical drives (most RAID controllers support this option), the first one (~10GB) to install ESXi and the second one to use as a VMFS datastore. This way you have separate drives for ESXi and the VMFS and should have no problems - in case it is necessary - to re-install ESXi.

André

[jamesbowling]

It is recommended to keep your installation separate from your other VMFS stores.  Although, it is nice and is done by a lot of people to run ESXi from a flash drive.  Just make sure that you are using a supported media for the installation.

[admin]

Install ESXi on a separate partition will make your data more safe.
When ESXi is re-installed, all the data on the installed partition will be cleared.If you have installed ESXi on the disk used as VMFS datastore, all the vms stored on this datastore would be lost. This is not the case we hope.

Install ESXi on a separate partition will prevent this situation. Even the ESXi is re-installed or some problem happen to the ESXi system( this should be small probability event, ^_^), your datas and vms will be OK all the time.