ESXi on Flash Boot

[KJDzikowicz]

Hi, Ive got a Tyan Server im about to install ESXi on.

I was wondering if anyone has used an Industrial Flash Module as a boot drive for ESXi?

My dilemma is i have 6 SATA channels i want to use for drives for VM space. I also have a single IDE channel.

I can get Industrial IDE Flash modules at 2GB and 4GB with good speeds (70M/s) and 2M write cycles.

How big of drive would i need to just install ESXi on to so that i can leave my SATA for VM's?

Thanks.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

You'll need 1 GB of space (after the install make sure to set the scratch location in advanced options) and you should be using USB 2.0 certified flash devices. ESXi creates a RAM drive when it loads so most of the writes it does are to the RAM drive and not flash so I wouldn't worry about the disk load of the ESXi install partitions.




Dave

VMware Communities User Moderator

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[fajarpri]

I'd suggest if you can, use the solid state drive. usb flash have certain usage read/write limit.

[KJDzikowicz]

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/fdm80sqi2g

Thats the particular Flash module i am looking at using.

I dont particularly like using USB devices for anything that requires reliability.

Thanks for the size information. That was what i was after,

[DSTAVERT]

Most major server manufacturers Dell, HP, IBM, Fujitsu, etc. offer ESXi preinstalled on USB or SD cards. ESXi was designed to run from USB/Flash. Since as Dave said there is very little writing to the usb disk, you shouldn't need to worry about reliability.

[fajarpri]

Maybe true, but not really true for upgrading. I botched my ESXi3 3.5 trying to upgrade it to ESXi4.

I now abandon the "embedded" usbflash and luckily have spare hdd on the blade and install ESXi4 on it. So happy now.

[DSTAVERT]

I have had 1 or two USB upgrades 3.5 to 4 fail due to a partition issue. It took 30 seconds to replace the USB stick with a new one and on my way. Most of my USB upgrades went just fine.

I'm not sure the IDE flash module will be a supported install.

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

As David mentions with an IDE device you could likely install ESXi but it wouldn't be a supported option and it will come down to what sort of controller your server has.




Dave

VMware Communities User Moderator

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Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL.

[KJDzikowicz]

Its a NVidia MCP55 controller for SATA and IDE.

Its a Tyan S2927A2NRF-E motherboard.

I dont have any internal USB ports, only pin headers.

Im also not sure if the board can boot from a USB device. I havent tried it yet, because its something im not fond of doing.

[DSTAVERT]

If the motherboard has pin headers you can get a USB dom from the same site you were looking at the IDE dom.

[DSTAVERT]

Unless this is a really old tyan mb it will boot from usb. I use several tyan servers as routers and run from USB.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

What sort of disk performance will you require. If it's light you'll be fine but if you have some heavier I/O VMs then the MCP controller isn't going to scale too high.




Dave

VMware Communities User Moderator

Now available - vSphere Quick Start Guide

Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL.

[J1mbo]

Echoing the above, in my testing I find the MCP55 maxes out at about 40 MB/s when running in ESXi.

Please award points to any useful answer.

[KJDzikowicz]

Thanks for all the information.

Any experience with an LSI 3081E-R with the IT firmware?

Thats my alternative to using the MCP55.

I wish i had more points to hand out, you guys are being incredibly helpful.

Thanks again.