Afternoon Going to build myself a new VMware home lab and was thinking of installing VMware ESXi on a USB memory stick so I can use my SSD's & Raid Arrays purely for Datastores. Just a bit worried about the reliability of using a USB so wondering whos done it like that, has it been reliable and any preferred manufacturer to use? Cheers for any help
VMWare's own documentation says you can do it with a retail USB stick, minimum size 16GB to leave plenty of space for over-provisioning. I have done this at work, but the server has only been up and running for two weeks so I can't give you any reports on long-term reliability. No problems with it so far at least. I got one of these.
Been using a 16Gb Cruzer slice for 3+ years, was in my N40L and now in my Gen8. no issues other than a re-install when I moved to the Gen 8. Stick with a solid make and your good to go. Enjoy S.
I'm pretty sure that it only boots from the stick and runs in ram once booted. So you can pull the USB stick out and it will work away on its own. Don't try it on a production server though
Awesome, just the replies I was looking for, thanks guys, I got a brand new 16gb Kingston in my drawer so will give that a go
