Supermicro 64GB DOM (Disk on Module) or SSD?

[TXAG26]

I am currently using USB flash drives to boot FreeNAS and vSphere ESXI. I'm looking into replacing those with either 64GB Supermicro DOM's or 250GB SSD's (Crucial MX200).

I'm leaning towards the 64GB DOM as it has 530MB/s reads and 185MB/s writes, and has an endurance rating of 68TB writes. ( http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/SATADOM.cfm )

For about the same price though, I can get a 250GB SSD and, at least with ESXI, partition part of it for boot, and I think the rest of the SSD space can be made available to ESXI for running VM's.

I think for FreeNAS, it's really between a USB flash drive or DOM, but could boot and make use of use USB, DOM, or SSD with ESXI.

Thoughts?

 

[jgreco]

The SSD is cheaper and you can find small capacity SSD's for WAY cheaper. The DOM is more elegant.

 

[marbus90]

of a 238GiB (256GB) SSD ESXi 5.5 reserves 8GiB for boot and lets you use the rest as datastore. same with the SATADOM, which leaves you 50GiB give or take.

I'd always prefer the DOMs or mSATA solution as it doesn't use up a bay or needs cabling (with yellow SATA ports ofc). Especially with Quadnodes, as you can hide 2x 64GB in the "blade" and have all 6x2.5 or 3x3.5" available for additional drives.

 

[TXAG26]

of a 238GiB (256GB) SSD ESXi 5.5 reserves 8GiB for boot and lets you use the rest as datastore. same with the SATADOM, which leaves you 50GiB give or take.

I'd always prefer the DOMs or mSATA solution as it doesn't use up a bay or needs cabling (with yellow SATA ports ofc). Especially with Quadnodes, as you can hide 2x 64GB in the "blade" and have all 6x2.5 or 3x3.5" available for additional drives.

Great information, thank you! I guess I've never taken the time to see how much ESXI actually claims on certain types of drives. Do you know if the same holds true for ESXi 6.0 regarding the 8GB of space?

 

[jgreco]

Great information, thank you! I guess I've never taken the time to see how much ESXI actually claims on certain types of drives. Do you know if the same holds true for ESXi 6.0 regarding the 8GB of space?

It won't be substantially different, and is probably the same, else it'd be a bear to upgrade.

 

[marbus90]

ESXi 6 will want 16GiB instead of 8GiB.

 

[jgreco]

Really? Wow, that sucks.

 

[gpsguy]

Thanks for the info. I hope to migrate an ESX 5.1 test machine to 6.0 next week.