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  • 1.  Best Practices - Dedicated SSD for Guest VM

    Posted Jan 15, 2014 12:38 PM

    What are the best practices for configuring a SSD as a dedicated hard drive for a guest VM?

    Specs:

    VMWare ESXi 5.1.0, 1312873

    Dell PowerEdge R910

    12 CPU

    128 GB RAM

    5 x 300 GB 10k SAS (RAID 5) - VMDKs of VM OS'

    2 x 300 GB 10k SAS (RAID 1) - VMWare ESXi

    2 x 400GB SSD SAS Value SLC 6Gbps - Each to one to be dedicated to a single VM

    ------------

    What I am trying to achieve is the best performance of a dedicated SSD to a VM. The VM is already running on a different datastore (10K RAID5 SAS drives).

    What I have done in the past is configure say a 300GB 10K SAS drive as a single Virtual Disk on the PERC controller, create a datastore and when making it available to a VM thick providion it with Lazy Zero as well as making it Independent-Persistent.

    I am unsure if all of the previous steps would be an overkill for an SSD. The VM generates a lot of READs/WRITES & I am trying to increase performance to the dedicated drive by upgrading it to SSD.

    Thanks in advance!



  • 2.  RE: Best Practices - Dedicated SSD for Guest VM

    Posted Jan 15, 2014 01:51 PM

    I'd say with SLC-based SSD there is no need to worry about read/write cycles. Just leave at least 10-20% of its capacity free (in addition to over-provisioning). If you keep it close to 100% full, it looses performance...