ESXi 5.1u1, Mo 2xsata3 ports, you want to add SSD cache but what port?

Hi all

This is my first post and I'm not speaking English, so I'll try to explain my question in the best conditions.

We run esxi 5.1u1 on a small server with office components:

-i5 - 3570 k [could get i5-3570 non - K]

-z77 motherboard (msi g43) [could get Q77 Board from gigabyte]

-16 GB of ram ddr3 1600 mhz non - ecc

-2xHDD western digital RED 2 to each, no raid

-backup to NAS

and on 10vm between linux and windows guests (usually only 6 are in normal production [AD, FS, PBX), to manage a network of 4 desktops.

We ask to add a SSD 120gbSATA3 caching, using build-in functionality of ESXI 5.1u1, but we have a problem on the choice of the correct configuration of the disk since we only 2 port sata3.

  1. Hard drives are sata3 and actually connected to the sata3 ports 2 (Controller intel);
  2. We've got to other 4-port sata2 on a different construction to the controller;
  3. We can afford a raid at the moment card;
  4. should we put on the benefit from the speed of cache sata2 ssd, or the only way is sata3?

Thanks in advance.

You can put on sata2 SSDS (interface is backward compatible), but you will suffer serious non-performance. With sata3 you get 600 MB/s transfer speed, with sata2 just 300 MB/s (taking into account encoding 8B / 10B). And consumers of today SSD sequential transfer rate is approaching even this maximum limit of sata3 interface (i.e. Samsung 840Pro: 520 / 540 MB/s). If you put on sata2 SSDS, you will seriously degrade its performance, perhaps to half of its capacity. If you want to use for caching SSDS, I wouldn't put the SSD on sata2 interface.

I would of put HDD sata2 rather (and use for SSD sata3 ports). With the exception of the disk cache, without disk hard common has over 300 MB/s transfer speed. He could suffer from degradation in performance a little too much when using cache, but is not as much as the SSD...

Tags: VMware

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