Create nested ESXi for vSAN experiments with SSD disk
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Home > VMWare platform > VMWare vSphere or ESXi > Create nested ESXi for vSAN experiments with SSD disk
If we want to experiment with vSAN in nested environment then we need to emulate SSD disk for cache or even for capacity (all-flash). In such cases there are two options to configure disk as SSD in nested ESXi
Configure normal disk and write rules in ESXi to treat it as SSD
To do this use:
- List the hard-disks using:
- esxcli storage core device list | grep 'mpx\|Size\|SSD'
- Note that output size in in MB
- Note the ID such as mpx.vmhba0:C0:T4:L0 for the disk that you want to get recognized as SSD
- Write rule to recognize chosen device as SSD using:
- esxcli storage nmp satp rule add -s VMW_SATP_LOCAL -d mpx.vmhba1:C0:T2:L0 -o enable_ssd
- Check the rules using:
- esxcli storage nmp satp rule list
- No check the hard-disk list again using:
- esxcli storage core device list | grep 'mpx\|Size\|SSD'
- This time the configured disks should be recognized as SSDs
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Configure ESXi to present disk as SDD to guest OS
The advantage of this method is that this is guest OS independent. This way we can present a disk as SSD to other guest OS (Linux/Windows) for appropriate guest OS action, if it is dependent upon disk being SSD. To do this use:
- Create a VM with required CPU (Enable IOMMU, Exposting virtualization to guest, etc.), RAM and disks
- For disk to be shown as SSD note the controller ID and disk ID of virtual disk (Eg scsi0:1)
- Create the VM without powering it on.
- Download the VMs .vmx file and edit it using any text editor (Wordpad in windows)
- Add option such as:
- scsiX:Y.virtualSSD = 1
- where X is controller ID and Y is the disk ID. In the above example use:
- scsi0:1.virtualSSD = 1
- Upload the edited vmx file back to datastore
- (Optional) deregister and register the VM back using the edited VMX file.
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