dual socket 1U servers with internal dual SD cards to run ESXi?

T

Thuleman

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So I see that there are some of the 2U Dell servers, such as the R720 that have dual internal SD cards. Presumably one can run ESXi on those SD cards.

My question is, why isn't there a 1U dual socket server that has the SD cards? It would seem to me that there are plenty of shops out there who just need a server that has CPU and memory but no hard drives yet the vendors insist on creating chassis such as the R720 in which you can stick 16 drives. Seems rather odd.

Then I decided to check whether HP has a 1U server that has dual SD cards and gave up after a couple of minutes because the web site is so convoluted that I'd rather not buy any server at all than look through it for an HP server.

Yes, perhaps I am not in the best mood tonight but it shouldn't be so tricky to find the product I am looking for, if it in fact exists.
 
I would think it would exist, have u simply tried calling? i find the websites are always crap. its always worked better for me to call and say I want features A B and C what do you have in servers that match.

have u looked more into an appliance then a server? I think dell has devices more like what your saying, but they may label them different.
 
I am sure Dell have one with internal USB but I have never seen one with 2 x SD cards
 
The only small chassis hardware I've seen geared for diskless ESXi hosts as of yet are blades.. I know that probably doesn't help though sorry.
 
New Cisco C-series boxes have internal SD cards, including the 1U model. If you're using Fibre Channel or iSCSI you could even boot from SAN. That's becoming more and more common.
 
Boot from iSCSI FTW. But the HP DL G7 boxes all have at least a single SD card.
 
Thanks for the feedback, the R620 is a good find, not sure how I missed that last night. We are on a Dell contract so it's a lot easier to buy Dell than competing products.

iSCSI boot would require an HBA and I think that the SD card solution is less expensive and in some sense also puts less load on the shared storage.
 
Actually, this does beg the question though whether booting ESX from SD is a good idea as opposed to booting from a USB stick?
 
I dont think theres a difference really, I think for the most part once ESX is booted, other than logs it shouldnt be doing too much, most stress would be where the VM's are stored
 
This probably isn't what you're looking for, but the R210 ii (a single processor 1U) has 2 internal USB headers for flash drives as opposed to SD cards. I would assume higher end units would do the same.
 
if I remember correctly, the Fujitsu Primergy RX200 S7 has the option for an integrated flash module for ESXi or you just sitck your own (small) usb stick on an onboard header.
I think there's also an option to configure one of the onboard LAN ports for iSCSI boot.
 
Interesting, I had no idea Fujitsu even made servers, I guess they just aren't that big in the US.
 
We boot all of our hosts using USB but I'm going to start looking at whats involved with just using Auto-Deploy.
 
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