Looking forward, the need for ESXi hosts to support other VMware or 3rd party solutions is ever-increasing. This restricted the support for installing large modules, debugging functionality, and possible third-party components. There were constraints on using multiple solutions with the 6.x partition sizes, for example, if you started to combine NSX-T, vSAN, Tanzu, vGPU etc. Before vSphere 7, partition management was limited in that partition sizes were fixed and the partition numbers were static. This blog post will outline such issues in detail and provide the technical guidance to mitigate the same.īefore getting into the details, it is crucial to understand the new system layout. We are now witnessing boot-related problems more frequently with ESXi 7.x with the hosts using SD cards or USB drives as boot media. SD cards and USB drives may also exhibit performance issues and may not tolerate high-frequency read-write operations. Such devices, however, have lower endurance and exhibit reliability and issues over time. Historically, SD cards or USB devices have been chosen to free up device bays and lower the cost of installing ESXi hosts. For full details regarding the use of USB/SD cards as a boot device for ESXi, refer to KB Article 85685. Note: The below content, originally published September 30, 2021, has been updated to reflect the revised stance on USB/SD cards as a boot device for ESXi outlined in KB Article 85685.

Esxi usb 3 card