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[StartAnISP]

Any suggestions for a good dedicated server provider that offers servers compatible with ESXi?

Looking for a reasonable cost/reliability balance.

Have only used dedicated servers in the past with one OS installed but started checking out ESXi the other day and I think I am going to make the jump and build up one dedicated servers with a few VM instances running under it.

Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance.

[deltahost]

What you mean under "compatible"? All servers compatible.

[Ionity]

Originally Posted by deltahost

What you mean under "compatible"? All servers compatible.

This is not true.

ESXi has some limitations that it REQUIRES a hardware RAID controller to present a RAID protected data store. You _could_ hack together multiple drives presented to ESXi (as say datastore1, datastore2, datastore3, datastore4) and then setup software RAID in the guest VM's (Linux), however you would not be able to properly run RAID10 for a Windows guest.

To the OP, your best bet is to discuss with some providers and understand their experience. It is very important There are several things that can be done to really help your ESXi experience run better.

For example an Adaptec 5405 or an LSI 9260-4i type controller will run with ESXi without hassles, however an Adaptec 6405 will not.

If you have any specific questions about ESXi on a dedicated, I would be happy to provide you with additional answers.

Thanks

[Brian_R]

Originally Posted by Ionity

To the OP, your best bet is to discuss with some providers and understand their experience. It is very important There are several things that can be done to really help your ESXi experience run better.

+1

ESXi is a great tool (as long as you're not trying to sell superbudget VPSs!) but not necessarily the simplest. Pick a provider who can help you out if you need it.

We've found R310/410 and up with H700 RAID cards very effective with ESXi.

[Ionity]

Originally Posted by Brian_R

+1

ESXi is a great tool (as long as you're not trying to sell superbudget VPSs!) but not necessarily the simplest. Pick a provider who can help you out if you need it.

We've found R310/410 and up with H700 RAID cards very effective with ESXi.

??

It is not legal to run ESXi for hosting customers without being a registered VMware Service Provider. It is probably going to be cost prohibitive for "sueprbudget VPSs"

[Brian_R]

Originally Posted by Ionity

??

It is not legal to run ESXi for hosting customers without being a registered VMware Service Provider. It is probably going to be cost prohibitive for "sueprbudget VPSs"

That was exactly my point!

[Maxnet]

Be aware that many RAID cards are only partially supported under ESXi.
In the way that you can access the storage, but cannot view the array status, and never get any kind of notification if a drive fails.


LSI cards do support it, but require that you install extra software (SMIS Provider)
Also there are Areca cards that have their own network port, so you can monitor the status using that.

[Stratogen]

You are going to miss out on most of the benefits of ESXi if you run it as a stand alone server. It's possible, but as others have mentioned it's not strictly legal to resell services without being part of the service provider program.

[Kevin Hillstrand]

Correct, ESXi is quite picky on RAID cards, I would recommend LSI, they are the best in the business and fully support ESXi as Maxnet said.

Be sure to research your raid card to ensure it supports ESXi.

[Brian_R]

There is a very comprehensive compatibility guide for VMWare on their site: http://www.vmware.com/resources/comp...ity/search.php