Hi guys, I'm after picking some VMWare geeks brains! I am currently in the process of setting up a cloud based dedicated server for a local company. I am currently running server 2012 R2 on the free vision of VMware. The server is running x3 300GB SSD drives. Iso 2768 Hole Tolerance Zones. I am wanting to create a RAID1 (or RAID5) configuration for redundancy purposes.
Now, our cloud based provider does support hardware RAID which is perfect however, the cost monthly is pretty much double. I do appreciate that this is the best option and if I could it would be the one I would go for, but its just too much to spend with the budget we have until the company expands anyway! I know that ESXi doesn't support software RAIDs but can anybody think of some alternatives? - even if it is some kind of replication that can be switched over manually if a drive fails? Running ESXi on the cheap is a really bad way to do virtualization.
Not only are you spending your money on a third-party provider, but you've selected NOT the cheapest server option, but perhaps the worst one. If you'd signed up for a virtual server instead of a physical one, you would have your cloud and data security as well.
Oct 19, 2016. A new feature in windows 2012 installed by default in all server editions! Clutch Hive Mediafire Download Links. Microsoft calls it Storage Virtualization and the idea behind it is somewhat familiar to most administrators that have worked on a hardware RAID controller before. In fact disk virtualization is working like a software RAID with better. Edit: the ESXi installation was tried with RAID and without RAID, same problem. When configuring RAID, the disks are recognized. You will not see the software raid device to install on. We even met this problem when installing Windows Server 2008 (in order to install Hyper-V), with and without RAID 5 config. ESXi and vCenter Server 5.1 Documentation VMware vSphere ESXi and vCenter Server 5.1 Documentation vSphere Installation and Setup Updated Information. Aug 30, 2012. This is very simple - you have two 250GB disks that are presented to any OS as two disks, that you'd configured Windows to mirror them is nice but irrelevant as they were always two disks. ESXi is just seeing the same two disks and as it doesn't support software RAID is just showing you the two disks as.