ESX 7 standalone installation (local storage)

[Pes1964]

hello

I have preparing configuration for standalone ESX with local disks only. Plan is to host 12 vm's.

Do you have experience with that setup regarding required storage performance?

I am counting with SAS 12 Gbps  disks in RAID configuration. Is it enough use RAID 5 or to go with RAID 10?

Also is it recommended to use Raid adapter  with local cache ? I am counting with 2 GB cache.

Thank you in advance

[amohammadimir]

You need to calculate your required capacity and performance (mostly IOPS) of your applications and based on that select your disks speed and raid type to satisfy your needs.

lastly, raid controller cache can be useful to increase performance.

[continuum]

How do you plan to regularly backup your VMs ?

If you have no answer to that question then either forget your plan or do this :

1. use Raid 1 or 10 - do not even think about Raid 5 !!!

2. create all vmdks as eager zeroed thick

3. do not use thin provisioned vmdks

4. do not use snapshots

5. run vmkfstools -p 0 name-flat.vmdk > mapping.txt and store the textfile outside of the ESXi. Do that for all VMs after you create them and after every expand of a vmdk

6. move to a location with less than one expected power-failures per year

[Pes1964]

thank you. Apparently i have to collect  read and write IOPS and decide based on that. Plan is to have  daily backup running. However we do not have SAN

available.