personal data storage on ESXi

[BugMeNot22222]

I have four 1TB drives in RAID5 connected to an Areca controller on my ESXi machine. I plan to centralize my multimedia and document storage (approximately 3 terabytes, very vital data to me). My intention of using ESXi is to combine small services (pfsense gateway, file server, etc.) into one. My choices are below for storage:

a) create one big datastore (3 terabytes) and put everything there.

b) buy another system and put openfiler on it (i think this would be the proper way to do it?)

c) run openfiler within ESXi (sounds really crude)

Any other options? I would like recovery of the data to be as simple as possible (thus I'm leaning to option B). The connection between ESXi system and switch is quad gigabit.

[weinstein5]

First off option a) will not work - ESXi will not recognize more than 2 TB of storage in a VMFS datastore - both b and c work but I agree with you option b should be the best -

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or useful -

[BugMeNot22222]

so building a SAN is the only solution? no other way to store data in an easily recoverable manner LOCALLY on an esx system?

does the openfiler system need to be high specced? basically fast raid controller+fast gigabit adapters is all thats required?

[weinstein5]

With all 4 types of storage available to you, iSCSI SAN, FC SAN, NAS/NFS and Direct Attached Storage you face the same questions in regards to backing up - do I back up through the VM via a back up agent or do I back up via the system by backing up the entire virtual disk - for the openfiler you have nailed it on the head fast RAID controller and GigE ethernet -