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Immortal
Immortal

Hello and welcome to the forums.

I need to create a VM to host a 2TB volume filled with pdf and office documents.

2TB - 512 bytes is the maximum size for a LUN presented to ESXi - this is for VMFS or a RDM.

OS: Windows Ent. 2003R2x64 or 2008R2

My personal preference would be 2008 R2.

RAM: 4Gb or more?

I would start with 1 GB on a file server, unless you have benchmark or baseline data that suggests you really need more than this.

Number of CPUs: 1 or more

I would start with 1 and monitor it.

Volume type RDM or VMDK

Either approach will work. Your backup strategy could come into play, depending on if you are going to leverage the EQ for back ups or not. If you need to grow beyond the 2 TB - 512 bytes limit soon, you could present the iSCSI volumes directly to the Windows Server via the Microsoft iSCSI initiator. This will get you around the current limit, but may impact your backup strategies as well. The backup strategy will sway the final decision, so how are you going to be backing this up?

Good Luck!

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com
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