Overview:
I am running a Dell R230 1U rackmount server. It has 4 hard disk bays.
At present, I am 'wasting' the 1st disk bay as my ESXI VM datastore, but I am interested to see if I can refactor this in order to allow me to pass all 4 hard disk bays through to Xpenology.
Background:
On my first attempt at using Xpenology, I used Jun's loader to do the following:
I installed ESXI to the internal USB stick and I boot ESXI from that USB stick
My first physical hard disk is a 500GB unit. I have the full 500GB set up as my VM datastore.
Within that datastore I have a folder for Xpenology (containing synoboot.img and synoboot.vmdk) and a folder for 'NAS' (containing .vmdk files for the physical disks that I am passing through to Xpenology and various vmware.log files)
Synoboot.vdmk is set up as a 50MB thinly provisioned disk on SATA controller 0:0
The 'NAS' VM datastore is set up as a 50GB thinly provisioned disk on SATA controller 1:0
I then pass through physical disks 2, 3 and 4 on SATA controller 1:1, 1:2, and 1:3, respectively.
My question:
Is it possible to set up a, say, 128GB USB stick as my VM datastore, such that I boot ESXI from USB stick #1, store the VM datastore on USB stick #2 and then pass through all four of my physical disks to Xpenology?
I believe the simple answer is probably "Yes - it is possible". My next question is "should I do this"?
I am specifically concerned about USB wear over time. Initial boot of ESXI and Xpenology into memory is low impact to the USB stick, but I am worried about constant log file / scratch file writing to the USB sticks. Is it possible to set up ESXI and the Xpenology VM datastore such that there is no writing to the USB sticks?