HyperFlex Installation location

[AirBorn]

Hello,

Can someone clarify the following about HyperFlex HX220c node

1/ What is the purpose of the housekeeping drive ( also refered to as System/log drive) ?

2/ On what drive ESXi is installed ( housekeeping, capacity..) ?

3/ On what drive DPC VM is installed?

Regards

[Kirk J]

House keeping drives are typically where the local datastore is created that houses the storage controller VM.

ESXi is installed on either SD card (internal flexflash slots) mirror for M4s, or for M5's its on a M.2 drive who's controller and drives sits in same slot that alternately houses the flexflash controller.

The storage controller VM is stored on a local datastore on housekeeping drive.

On HX 220M4s, the housekeeping datastore is stored on another partition on the SD cards that also have ESXi boot partition.

Kirk... 

[AirBorn]

thanks Kirk for the update

I'm a bit confused here. in Cisco documentation (https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/UCS_CVDs/hyperflex_30_vsi_esxi.html)  it is said,for M5 nodes,  that the ESXi is installed on internal M.2 SSD boot drive.

Also, the DPC VM root filesystem is created on internal M.2 SSD boot drive. and the HyperFlex binaries and logs are placed on housekeeping drive

Is this still correct

Regards

[Kirk J]

On the M5s, the IO writes are cached to the 'caching' disk.

The system/log/housingkeeping disk is the storage controller VM running on a local datastore.  Storage controller VM = system =house keeping= log  (Not the boot drive).

The boot drive is where ESXi is installed.  On M5s this is the internal M.2 drive.  On M4s this was internal SD cards (flex-flash)

The location of the caching disks varies due to LFF, SFF, 220/240 models

240M5 SFF (caching in rear drive slots, and house keeping/storagecontroller VM/logs is slot 1 sata SSD in front), ESXi installed on M.2 sata SSD internally

220M5 SSF (caching is front drive slot 2, Slot 1 in front is house keeping/log/system/storage controller VM), ESXi installed on M.2 sata SSD internally

240m5 rear drive bay220M5 M.2 SSD location

240m5 M.2 SSD location

240 m5 front view

Kirk...