Everything-Virtual

Category: SanDisk

  • VMware Flash Read Cache Installation

    In my home lab I decided to install 3 SanDisk SDSSDP-128G-G25 SSD’s for VMware’s Flash Read Cache, this lets you accelerate virtual machine performance through the use of host resident flash devices as a read cache. Now please understand that these drives aren’t on the HCL so your mileage may vary.

    I have a full page dedicated to Flash Read Cache being prepared for my VCAP 5.5 Guide so I won’t do the whole thing here.

    Finally this post was initially created using vSphere 5.5 but the steps are identical when completing the work on a vSphere 6 environment.

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  • SanDisk Cruzer Fit – Write Protect on ESXi 5.x – Fix

    I recently came across an issue with my home lab that indicated I had an issue with my Cruzer Fit going to a Write Protect mode, doing a search online showed that a number of people were also exhibiting the same kinds of issues but this wasn’t being restricted to SanDisk Fit drives.

    I have been a fan of the Cruzer Fit for a while now, it’s sleek size meant that prying little fingers (I have a two year old who loves to investigate) can’t pull it out and lose it and it looks great on the front of my Shuttle SH63H3 cases so I was a bit alarmed to realise that I may have to replace these with another brand of drive that may not offer me the same flush fit as the Cruzer Fit.

    One thing I have to mention is that my usual method of installing ESXi in to my lab environment usually involves using VMware Workstation to create a VM, attaching a USB drive to the laptop and then attaching that to the VM, hey presto you have a readily available way of installing ESXi on to a system that doesn’t have a CD\DVD drive fitted. The reason I mention this will become clearer later on in the article.

    Now I should mention that the original lab build was done on VMware ESXi 5.1 and I blogged about how to upgrade from 5.1 to 5.5 here, during that time I haven’t really had much need to make changes to my ESXi environment and didn’t take note as to if\when the SanDisk Cruzer Fit drives I was using in my environment went to read-only but I know it has to have been after the 5.5 upgrade.

    Now how did I know that the drives had gone to a write protect mode? well carry on after the break to find out.

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