Hi Aiyappa,  Yes, you can use ESXi as SDS-only, no problem with that. The way you configure them is through the Web Plugin - you deploy the SVMs over the hypervisors you want to use as your SDS and simply don't install SDCs on them.  All the installation steps are described in details in ScaleIO Deployment Guide which you can find here: [URL]  There's no real difference between bare metal and ESXi in terms of performance - some overhead exists for virtualized environments, but it's benig.  Hope that helps! Best, Pawel
Hello All,   can I create a ScaleIO cluster with  2 windows host + 2 ESXi Host ?   Regards,  Aiyappa 
Bare Metal and ESXI in the same ScaleIO cluster