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Yamyam45
Contributor
Contributor

Best RAID Configuration for ESX 6.5 Host - VM's stored on Local disks

Hi,

Can anyone advise me what the best RAID configuration would be for a ESX host it will be version 6.5. This is a new PowerEdge R740 server with 4 x 4TB disks. I have the SD Module installed with 2 SD cards so I will be installing ESX onto these cards. This is the first time I have had chance to use this hardware configuration and I am thinking which RAID configuration to use.

Thanks in advance...:)

Regards

Ian

4 Replies
golddiggie
Champion
Champion

Depends on your fault tolerance level. For just four drives, I'd go with either RAID 10 or maybe 6. It really comes down to how the hardware RAID controller in the box works with either. As a minimum, I'd go with RAID 5.

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Disks, and RAID level should actually be planned based on the expected workload. A recommendation just about hardware may be possible, but it may not meet your requirements.

Anyway, to answer your question. With the 4TB disks, I'd go with RAID6, even though RAID6 may provide less performance than e.g. RAID10. The reason why I recommend this is the possible rebuild duration in case of a HDD failure, and the risk of a complete failure during this time. RAID5 (other than RAID5 + Hot-Spare) has the advantage, that 2 disks can fail at the same time.


André

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

IMHO using raid 5 for a vmfs-volume on local disks is an unacceptable risk.


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Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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golddiggie
Champion
Champion

That depends on if it's for a lab or production. If production, I agree 100%. For a lab (with zero important items running on it) it's not as much of a risk.