Need some help building new ESXi 5.1 whiteboxI currently have ESXi 4.0 running on a Dell Inspiron Desktop and I'm looking to build a new one on the 5.1 platform. I have a few questions.
1. I currently have 4 1TB Hard Drives, the initial plan was to setup a RAID5 Array and install everything on it. Apparently this will be a bit of a problem. So it looks like my realistic option here will be to install ESXi 5.1 on a bootable USB and use the HDDs for the datastores. What is the best way to build the system with a failsafe for crashes, ie. if the USB Boot Drive or one of the Hard Drives goes out on me.
- If the USB Boot Drive that hosts ESXi crashes will I lose all my VMs that are housed on the datastores (HDDs)? Or is there a way to create a backup and then re-install ESXi to a new drive and get everything back the same?
- Is there a way to build a RAID5 array after the ESXi host is installed on the USB Drive to create a Large Redundant datastore?
- If the RAID5 is not possible (or too expensive) what is the best way to back up the VMs so that if it does crash I can quickly bring it back up again?
- I am considering this RAID controller (3ware 9650SE)
I have not picked out a new Mobo or CPU yet but looking at some options I like this mobo
ASRock 970 EXTREME3 AM3+ AMD 970
and this CPU
AMD FX-6100 Zambezi 3.3GHz Socket AM3+ 95W Six-Core
Thanks for any help.