Partitioning for VSA?

[Rhidian]

Should I create a septate partition to be used for the ESXi install and the VSA and one for the shared storage or should I just have one single partition?

[Rhidian]

Anyone able to provide some advice?

[Mike Povall]

I normally install the VSA in its own partition and then create the required number of data partitions for the VSA 'disks' according to the required capacity.

[Rhidian]

I'm considering getting two extra disks and using them in a mirrored configuration with ESXi and the VSA installed and then using the remaining disks as the SAN space. Would that be a better solution than having everything installed on the one set of disks?

[Mike Povall]

I would certainly consider that option. I have used DL380 G7 servers with the additional drive cage in the past populating the first bay in each cage with a 72GB drive and the other 14 with 300GB drives. Create a mirror pair on the 72GB drives for the ESXi and a vmfs for the VSA itslef. Then RAID5 arrays on each group of 300GB disks for vmfs for the data drives of the VSA. This configuration works as a DR replication partner to a SAS Virtualisation SAN.

Regards, Mike.

[Jitun]

That is a good option but as the VSA OS itself will only require <10 Gb of Disk Space .. the additional space on the mirrored Drives would be wasted, if they are dedicated only to the VSA.

[RonsDavis]

I use a mirror set for the VSA and ESXi. If you read the docs sharing the data disks is not a supported configuration. Just buy the cheapest drives you can for the OS.