ESXi and Installation Volume

[beersykins]

Howdy

 

I was moving some stuff around for my sig rig server, is there any large detrimental reason to not install ESXi on the base/bulk main RAID array storage and instead use a separate medium such as dedicated drive or USB?  I only really planned on slicing space out of the array for VMs and having a container that does Samba with the lion's share of the array space.

 

The installation size for the hypervisor is pretty small, I was just going to yolo roll it on the same array but it seems like a lot of people keep them separated.

 

Thanks!

[Electronics Wizardy]

Its easier to move the install around and read the storage if your boot volume is seprate. It also allows for easier os upgrades.

 

Id personally put it on a usb or sd card as it makes it easier to manage and isn't more complicated, but it won't cause problems not to. One reason why lots of large companies do it this way is because there using network storage and a usb is cheaper than a basic hdd or ssd or there running a hyper converged system that can't be booted off the shared drive.

[leadeater]

Much nicer if you need to rebuild (destroy and re-create) an array if the OS is not also on it. I do that sort of thing a lot so that's why I care about installing on a dedicated USB or even a small SSD.

[Windows7ge]

I don't have experience with ESXi but looking at it from any other server OS type perspective revolving around storage or virtualization the separation of the boot drive from the array makes for what I would see as simpler setup, easier modularity (if you want to move the OS to a different system), or if you want to do something with an array that involves transplanting it into another server keeping the OS separate just simplifies things.

 

From the perspective of recovery and lets say we installed it on the RAID. If ESXi crashed and refused to work but the VMs and storage data on the array was fine how easily would booting from another disk with ESXi see the VM and storage data on the failed ESXi installation without that failed install interfering with the recovery itself?

 

Since these OS's can boot off thumb drives I see no reason not to keep that system.

[beersykins]

Good points, thanks dudes.  I usually roll a small SSD or something but haven't encountered too many disaster type of incidents, granted I don't do this type of work in any significant volume.

 

I appreciate the input.

[Windows7ge]

33 minutes ago, beersykins said:

but haven't encountered too many disaster type of incidents

Neither have I, I don't do this as an occupation either. The only incidents I've encountered were a result of human error. The recovery situation might be rare otherwise but when it happens and you see something is interfering with it you may see ways to implement preventative measurements to make the next time around easier on yourself. What we discussed is one of them.

 

45 minutes ago, beersykins said:

I appreciate the input.

Don't mention it. That's why we're here.

[Jarsky]

Installing ESXi to USB or SDCard is the recommended setup, then just configure your logging to go to the VMFS Datastore on the raid. 

[Mikensan]

It used to be you couldn't use the boot media as a datastore, but I've seen lately you are given the option to do so. Really if you lose your ESXI installation it isn't a big deal to re-install and add back the inventory, so I don't see any concerns. Even if it is part of vcenter and it up and dies, not too time consuming to remove it from inventory, rebuild, and add it back. Probably the only headache is if you have multiple vswitches and trying to recreate them and re-assign the VMs to the vswitches (I believe you can export your vswitch config pretty easily).

 

Have killed a couple USB thumb drives and have had to rebuild a handful of times, never really bothered me.