VMware media

I’m looking to install VMware ESXi on a thumb drive for my r710, but have concerns with longevity. It seems I would need to make changes to configurations like native logs to not wear out the thumb drive. I’m also newb and do not want to jump right into configuration changes like that.

Is a good alternative simply a small SSD in one of the hard drive bays to run ESXi off of? Because then the SSD firmware assists with longevity. Heck then I could use two small SSDs and leverage the hardware RAID as well. The datastore will be a combination of iSCSi and NFS from FreeNAS.

I ran ESXi on a 32GB Data Traveler USB for more than two years. No issues with running out of logs or spaces. Once you create your data sets I think the logs are stored there.

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I am pretty sure that during ESXi boot it loads the whole hypervisor into ram, and from then on only accesses the boot drive when settings are changed or for updates.

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ESXi recognizes if it’s running off a USB or SD Card reader, and will not thus save no logs onto those devices. You would need to set a different drive/location to have persistent logs.

Of course an SSD is going to be a better idea for just in general for the reasons you stated already, and also the excess drive space from those SSDs can be used as a local datastore

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Using this as an excuse for retail therapy, SSDs are so affordable now lol. I have two included caddies for the r710 to plop two in and use the on-board RAID.

I always wanted to run off of a USB or SD card though because its so neat. 1st world Home Lab problems…

No worries. And yeah, SSD prices are so much cheaper these days that it makes sense to put up the extra 50-60 bucks for a 128-256gb Raid 1 SSD array for your ESXi and starting datastore