I have a few questions on ESXi that I'd like to clear up. I recently purchased a Dell PowerEdge 1950-III with 16 gigs of ram, 2x 146gb 2.5" SAS drives, dual L5410 QC processors, PERC 6/i RAID controller, DRAC, etc. I'm planning to use this system in a colocation center about 2 hours away to host a few websites and possibly a game a server. I hear the way to install ESXi these days is to put it on a USB stick and boot off that or use a SD card. I'm concerned about the reliability of cheap flash memory so I was thinking about buying a SD to SATA adapters and mirroring two SD cards - does this seem like a viable option? Also, I believe ESXi 5.5 requires teh vSphere client to manage the VMs. I'm on a strict budget and would like to avoid investing ESXi for now... is 5.1 still free indefinetly?
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ESXi SD card installation
- Thread starter Cyrix2k
- Start date
burritoincognito
Gawd
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5.5 still has the client that can manage the VMs. You're limited to version 9 hardware compatibility (I think), but it's fully functional. You just don't get any extra features offered by the webclient. I can't think of any compelling reason to stick with 5.1 over 5.5.
I use a USB flash drive in my R210ii. I wouldn't worry about using an SD card, or whatever the 1950 offers.
I use a USB flash drive in my R210ii. I wouldn't worry about using an SD card, or whatever the 1950 offers.
peanuthead
Supreme [H]ardness
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ESXi 5.5 has a free option. As far as mirroring SD cards, you are not going to be able to unless you place them on a RAID card in that server. Yes, most people just load ESXi on a USB drive. Reliability, just get a good name brand.
The 1950 doesn't have a built-in SD card as far as I know. Thanks for clearing up my confusion regarding ESXi 5.55.5 still has the client that can manage the VMs. You're limited to version 9 hardware compatibility (I think), but it's fully functional. You just don't get any extra features offered by the webclient. I can't think of any compelling reason to stick with 5.1 over 5.5.
I use a USB flash drive in my R210ii. I wouldn't worry about using an SD card, or whatever the 1950 offers.
I was planning on buying two SD to SATA adapters and trying to put them on the PERC 6/i. The 1950 has four 2.5" drive bays and I'm only using two. The big thing is that I don't want to be in a situation where the USB drive or SD card fails and I need to drive four hours round-trip to fix it. If I go with a USB drive, do I just leave it plugged into an external port (not sure how good of an idea that is in a colo) or try to stash it internally or what?ESXi 5.5 has a free option. As far as mirroring SD cards, you are not going to be able to unless you place them on a RAID card in that server. Yes, most people just load ESXi on a USB drive. Reliability, just get a good name brand.
Thanks!
5.5 still has the client that can manage the VMs. You're limited to version 9 hardware compatibility (I think), but it's fully functional.
the 5.5U2 thick client allows you to manage VMs even if they are version 10 hardware.
You just can't edit any of the version 9 or 10 specific settings.
peanuthead
Supreme [H]ardness
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The 1950 doesn't have a built-in SD card as far as I know. Thanks for clearing up my confusion regarding ESXi 5.5
I was planning on buying two SD to SATA adapters and trying to put them on the PERC 6/i. The 1950 has four 2.5" drive bays and I'm only using two. The big thing is that I don't want to be in a situation where the USB drive or SD card fails and I need to drive four hours round-trip to fix it. If I go with a USB drive, do I just leave it plugged into an external port (not sure how good of an idea that is in a colo) or try to stash it internally or what?
Thanks!
Then I would just get two cheap hard drives, mirror then, and load ESXi on them. 10-14 watts of total power over not having them in a colo is small change to me.