ESX and SSD's

I have seen a noticeable improvement, however I still also like to configure in RAID. There is a lot of talk about performance loss and lifetime with SSDs that worry me a little in servers, but RAID eases my concerns.
On smaller networks on a tighter budget I often have 2x250gb SSD mirrored - for system, swapfile, temp files etc, and then 4,6,or 8 spinning disks for data.

Yes, there are big improvements if you require the IOPS.

You may also consider PCI-E cards, e.g. Fusion-IO


We still not seen any failure of SSDs, due to wear! (we have six year old SSDs!)

Yes you will see big performance increase by installing a SSD, Also consider installing SSD for ESX Caching..
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2058983
http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-51/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vsphere.resmgmt.doc%2FGUID-4505B56B-57B1-413F-ACE3-BA2A85C3EC88.html
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vfrc-perf-vsphere55.pdf


Have a look at this website to see SSD compatibility for your servers I will only recommend Enterprise mainstream/performance SSD's
http://www.hpproliantoptions.com/index.aspx

DirkMare

Its not only a topic for ssd or against you have also to proof if you have a HP controller who can do HP SSD Smart Path feature with hpsa or the old ccis driver.

Also check what kind of SSD you will buy. There are differences between read optimized or even heavily read write. On HP its the class enterprise value or enterprise performance.

Here you have to decide how much you want to spend. Additional do not use consumer ssd in a productive server.

Thanks for the feedback.

I had only planned to buy a single SSD to run ESXi, so it looks like it's not worth doing as it runs from RAM.

Just install ESXi onto an SD card or USB flash drive....

Here is the VMware KB on installing 5.x on USB/SD:
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2004784

put your datastore on  SSD

As it loads into RAM it looks like the benefit is only for boot speed.

Many thanks