Cheap USB Key OK for ESXi?

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Ehren8879

Supreme [H]ardness
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Sep 24, 2004
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I have a spare 2GB Kingston Datatraveler that I'd like to install ESXi 5 on. I intend for this to be a semi permement installation, but will the USB key hold up? Is ESXi doing a lot of constant writing to the installed media?

Furthermore, would I really benefit from installing on a USB key if I intend for the primary HDD to be permanent in the server?
 
Some drives are made with different flash technology than others. ESXi logs very little to the drive so failure can be uncommon. We have been running 25 hosts on usb drives for over a year without a failure.

I think if ANYTHING you may see a failure on reboot but I'm not sure if a host would PSOD.

Will wait for some of the VMware experts to comment.

My ESXi hosts at home are running off $5 2GB Sandisk USB drives.
 
Ehren8879 said:
will the USB key hold up?
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Yes. It should be a drive of decent quality though. A quicker drive will mean slightly faster loading of ESXi from cold boot.

Ehren8879 said:
Is ESXi doing a lot of constant writing to the installed media?
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No.

Ehren8879 said:
Furthermore, would I really benefit from installing on a USB key if I intend for the primary HDD to be permanent in the server?
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Makes it easy to upgrade ESXi in the future. Not having it installed on the internal drive also makes it easier to upgrade to larger storage in the future, since you can just plug the new drive in, migrate your VMs and then remove the old data drive without rebooting.
 
They're ok. If they die, they die, but they do have a habit of dying. We don't write a lot to them, but there's a lot of reads at boot, and a few lookups that can eventually kill cheaper drives. But, it's the install drive - big whoop :p
 
Any one in particular people recommend for a good, cheap drive? - is there such a thing as a SLC flash drive?
 
RiDDLeRThC said:
Some drives are made with different flash technology than others. ESXi logs very little to the drive so failure can be uncommon. We have been running 25 hosts on usb drives for over a year without a failure.

I think if ANYTHING you may see a failure on reboot but I'm not sure if a host would PSOD.

Will wait for some of the VMware experts to comment.

My ESXi hosts at home are running off $5 2GB Sandisk USB drives.
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It will not crash the host if the USB drive fails, I THINK it keeps running but you cannot make any changes to the host. This is what happens if you accidentally passthrough the USB drive you have ESXi installed on.
 
I use 4gb ones( I think they recommand them), if you got highspeed ones its better, but overall thats all I use. I hardly ever use DAS. Shared storage and thats it.. Really cuts down prices on servers if you have no HD's in them any more.
 
Thanks for the replies.

I decided to proceed with my home lab ESXi install today. I've been running pfsense for a couple weeks on a dual core AMD 240 x2 with very positive results. It's the free router/firewall on steroids I've been looking for and it's actually really straight forward to use... I still still can't believe it. Since I'm confident it runs well on the native hardware, I decided to move pfsense to a vm and test it from there. While I was at it I scratched the itch and put Windows Home Server 2011 on it as well. 128GB of space remains for future test or permanent vm needs.

I've since demoted my WNDR3700 to wireless access point and four port switch duty until I get a proper switch.

I've yet to really stress the whole setup. Time to play some BF3 while torrenting and streaming off the WHS.
 
I installed the open vm tools package for pfsense as well. Not sure if I should change the NIC types from the E1000, but truth is, my host is only using the onboard Realtek and a pci Realtek Gbit nic currently.

Some intel NICs are on my "to buy" list.
 
NetJunkie said:
For pfsense leave it at E1000.
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Will do.

Just played on a full 64 player map all while pushing 14GB up to the WHS and torrenting a heavily seeded Centos distro.

No stuttering or lag. I'm quite pleased with this combo.
 
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