Working Vmware Hypervisor 5 with USB flash?

Question

USB

There are many references on the net about installing ESXi on a USB flash drive.
Want to understand why this is done?
There is an assumption that this is for the infrastructure of servers without their own disks + storage.
Does it make any sense to install a hypervisor on a USB flash drive for a standalone server with its own screws?
Since this is not a regular feature, I seriously fear for stability.
How long does a flash drive live in such a role? After all, for sure, logs are constantly being written.

Answer 1

This is done to save money. A flash drive is much cheaper than two drives plus a raid controller, especially if the server is branded. From IBM in the configurator, you can select a flash drive specifically for vSphere, so this is a question about abnormality.
For servers with their own screws, it probably makes no sense to put ESXi on a USB flash drive. We have had vSphere on a flash drive on 4 servers for a year now. Everything is great. There are a couple of flash drives with a hypervisor installed in stock, and in the event of a flash drive failure on one of the servers, everything is restored within 10 minutes.
PS: Without a raid controller, the server loads 15 seconds faster :)

Answer 2

Booting ESXi from a flash drive is convenient. Install on a flash drive, and then connect and mark up screws or screws from another host in vmfs (in case of death of the previous one).
You can read how often information is written from Mikhail Mikheev: www.vm4.ru/2011/09/write-on-esxi-boot-disk.html .
USB boot is a "standard feature". Please take a look at the documentation snippet :

You use the ESXi CD/DVD or a USB flash drive to install the ESXi software onto a SAS, SATA, SCSI hard drive, or USB drive.

In addition, many server manufacturers sell them (servers) with esxi pre-installed on a flash drive, this is mentioned in the setup guide ( PDF ).
You should not worry about stability in this aspect.