Anyone using an SSD as a datastore?

[tonyb]

I'd like to add an SSD datastore to my home ESXi kit for booting and databases. Anyone had any experiences positive/negative with doing so?

 

[NetJunkie]

Works fine. vSphere 5 will use it for swap space too.

 

[tonyb]

Have you seen any issues with slowdown because of the lack of TRIM support?

 

[Chilly]

Yes(I use SSD's in/as part of my iSCSI "SAN") and No(No performance issues due to lack of TRIM).

They work great in my home lab. A tad overkill, but great performance, love the IOPS I can get out of it.

 

[imsuchageek]

I just did for the first time recently. I would recommend installing ESXi 5, as it has optimizations for SSD's built in.

 

[tonyb]

I just did for the first time recently. I would recommend installing ESXi 5, as it has optimizations for SSD's built in.

If I'm not mistaken, the only SSD optimization is using the SSD as swap space.

 

[Vader]

vSphere 5 will use it for swap space too

Yup..i'm using that now in my lab. You have to setup the SATP rule to have the host actually see it as an SSD.

Great article here:

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/08/18/swap-to-host-cache-aka-swap-to-ssd/

 

[CEpeep]

Works fine, nice and fast. A good choice for local storage.