Hey LevelOneFriends,
So Dell (our vendor for computers) had a good sale so I have purchased a new server with an Epyc processor - 24 cores, 256GB Ram, 24 x 960GB SSD’s
This is to replace some other older servers - all of which are running ESXi V5 or V6. These are older dual CPU Xeons (6 cores per cpu) with 600GB HDD.
The question I have is around my RAID setup. I’m leaning towards a RAID60. tolerates the most failure and should provide the highest availability.
Usage: By far most VM’s are static, as in we install an application and it runs on that VM, not a lot of writes, not a lot of reads. Some of the VM’s are databases but not that change records - more of a “historian” which has a constant but slow write speed and then may ask for bulk reads - but not data center level reads.
After setting up the RAID array - should i install ESXi 7 or 6 ?
Is there anything else I should be thinking about now?
Couple notes below:
on these older dell servers I had looked at replacing the HDD with Samsung evo 860’s. The first two worked perfectly but when i ordered 10 to replace a bunch of the HDD their firmware did not play nice with dell and the orange light was always on. I tried and failed to downgrade the firmware so ended up using the Samsung’s on some client PC’s (not relevant to the actual question but just interesting)
I would try some of the gigabyte servers shown on the channel - but getting them in Australia has proven difficult. Dell, being our IT preferred vendor, is just easy to buy from. Also with our corporate Dell account we get pretty good support and discounts (but not on alien ware gaming laptops… and they don’t give them away with a server purchase)
I’m not in IT. I work in the OT space. My role is “process control engineer”, or as I like to describe “I make the buttons that homer simpson press do what they are meant to do” or “I make sure the reactor does not blow up in spite of homer”. Being the OT means i have to do a lot of IT and try to cover all aspects of it but my core focus is the actual manufacturing process. So I have a domain, but I’m not a domain admin. I have about 8 servers with about 40 VM’s but I’m not a sys-admin. I have to dabble, play, try, in all the fields but always wonder if I’m missing something basic;)
- Hence this question. Am i really setting up the base server as best i can?