So you decide to buy a SSD disk to start using virtual flash

"Virtual Flash Read Cache allows you to locally cache virtual machine read I/O on an ESXi host and even migrate that virtual machines cache to another Virtual Flash enabled ESXi host."

This is how you configure it.

  1. Add the SSD capacity to your ESXi Host. Do this by logging in to the vSphere Web Client and navigate to Host and cluster. Select your ESXi Host and select Manage – Settings. Under ‘Virtual Flash’ you find ‘Virtual Flash Resource Management’. Virtual Flash Resource Management
  2. Click the ‘Add Capacity’ button and select your SSD disk. click OK virtual flash 02
  3. Under ‘Virtual Flash Host Swap Cache Configuration’ you can configure the amount of cache. I selected all of the disk virtual flash 03

Now before you can configure a virtual machine with vSphere Flash Read Cache you need to upgrade the virtual machine to VM version 10. You can plan an upgrade (you need to restart your VM after this setting) or if your VM isnt started yet you can upgrade first virtual flash 04 To configure a virtual machine disk with a vSphere Flash Read Cache resource:

  1. Open the vSphere 5.5 Web Client.
  2. Click the Hosts and Clusters view.
  3. Select the ESXi host on which the virtual machine is running.
  4. In the Summary view under Hardware, verify and ensure that the host has a Virtual Flash Resource configured.
  5. Click the Related Objects tab.
  6. Right-click the virtual machine and Click Edit Settings.
  7. Select and expand the hard disk to which you want to assign the Flash Read Cache. For example, Hard disk 1.
  8. Enter the amount of Flash Read Cache to assign to the virtual hard disk (vmdk).
  9. Click OK, to apply the changes. virtual flash 06

To verify if the vSphere Flash Read Cache is added to the virtual machine:

  1. In the Hosts and Clusters view, select the virtual machine.
  2. Click the Summary tab.
  3. Select and expand the hard disk.
  4. Verify the amount of assigned vSphere Flash Read Cache is correct.

Have fun

Update 14-05-2015

here is the video if you don’t like to read:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeHz2crWVFA