Planning first ESX server consolidation project - hard drive question

[dant62]

We are in the process of planning a server consolidation. 3 lightly used servers will be migrated to a Dell PowerEdge 2950 running ESX 3.5. I am trying to determine the best storage setup. Will have to do local storage due to budget. How should the drives be configured? Should ESX be on its own physical drives and the rest be on a RAID10? Can I make one large RAID10 for everything? What are the best practices for this? Thanks.

Dan

[ctfoster]

RAID10 going to be really expensive on those local drives. For the type of load you are describing - maximise your space with a single RAID5 - else you'll find you'll run out of disc long before your get I/O bound.

[dant62]

So would one single RAID5 be best to cover all partitions required for ESX and the virtual machines, or should I consider separate RAID volumes for ESX and the client hard disks?

[mowgus · Accepted solution]

I personally go with a mirror for my ESX OS and then a Raid5 set for the Virtual Machines. Presuming you have at least 5 disks of course. You don't need very big disks for the OS obviously but the left over space you can use to store templates, ISO's, etc.

Also, going with a separate OS disk means that when it comes time to upgrade that ESX server, your VMs will be on a separate disk and you can do a clean install with slightly less concern you will blow them away. You would of course back up the VMs anyway....right?