On 03/27/11 2:57 AM, Jussi Hirvi wrote: > Any experience with the free "VMware vSphere Hypervisor"?. (It was > formerly known as "VMware ESXi Single Server" or "free ESXi".) one downside to ESXi, it does not support any sort of software raid. Normally ESX is used with a SAN, which provides all RAID functionality, or with NFS based storage (again, the NFS server providing the raid), but if you use it with direct attached storage, you had better have a supported hardware raid controller. Most server kit from the big vendors is fully supported (HP,Dell,IBM). You can boot ESXi from a small CF card, as once its booted, it doesn't touch the boot device at all.