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Purchase a NAS (Western Digital, NetGear, Synology) which supports NFS.<br />
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Add the NAS, via NFS to your single ESXi server.<br />
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You could either move and run your VMs to that storage or, just copy and backup the VMs to the storage.<br />
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In the event of failure of the ESXi host, obtain a new host, attach the storage and you can start up the VMs.
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Thank you all.<br />
Andrew:<br />
Using shared storage in a single esxi host is not going to achieve our objective, that is, if that ex host down then we will have no servers until we get fixed.<br />
If we buy another exi and use shared storage as you suggested will help.<br />
I am not familiar with budget friendly NAS devices. less money more trouble?<br />
Can i upgrade the existing sphere ver 5.1 essential to essential plus then buy another esxi with same storage (local).<br />
Does the essential plus support vMotion with local storage?<br />
Brutuz:<br />
How do we replicate each instance?
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We have &nbsp;vsphere essential 5.1 in a single ex host with local storage.<br />
We are trying to implement fail over in case if there is an issue with that ex host.<br />
We only have five VMs.<br />
how can we active this with budget friendly storage?
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We have  vsphere essential 5.1 in a single ex host with local storage.
We are trying to implement fail over in case if there is an issue with that ex host.
We only have five VMs.
how can we active this with budget friendly storage?

vmware with local storage

VMware, a software company founded in 1998,  was one of the first commercially successful companies to offer x86 virtualization. The storage company EMC purchased VMware in 1994. Dell Technologies acquired EMC in 2016. VMware’s parent company is now Dell Technologies.

VMware has many software products that run on desktops, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS, which allows the virtualizing of the x86 architecture.  Its enterprise software hypervisor for servers, VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), is a bare-metal hypervisor that runs directly on the server hardware and does not require an additional underlying operating system.