I was recently asked how to configure the host level swap to SSD drives. I try in this blog to give a step by step guide to create it. Before I start the configuration. Host Cache is one of the most efficient Features that is new to ESXi 5.x. This feature can be a cost-efficient gap to memory constrained ESXi’s, this acts as a swap improvement Feature
ESXi 5.x detect if the Disks are SSD or non-SSD . This should be desplayed in the vSphere client or web client, as it is a vSphere 5.x feature. If you do not have an SSD-Disk in your environment or in case the disk is not recognized as SSD’s, you should be able to tag any Disk as SSD. William Lam posted a blog How to Trick ESXi 5 in seeing an SSD Datastore.
After the disks are tagged as SSD, logon to the ESXi and then navigate to the configuration tab, under the category Software on the link host cache configuration, and then click on the link to add Storage.
The add Storage wizard starts Select Disk/LUN
Select the SSD disk VMFS version and enter the size wanted
Recommended is to use a dedicated disk for the host cache. To see what happened there, open the datastore browser and a new folder is created in the new VMFS datastore.
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