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Use cases for NVMe and hot-plug support on VMware ESXi
6 NVMe Hot-Plug on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers running VMware vSphere or vSAN | Technical white paper |
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2 Use cases for NVMe and hot-plug support on VMware ESXi
Listed below are the use cases for NVMe in VMware ESXi environment.
• Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) datastore: Virtual Machine File System is used to store virtual
machine disk files and associated files. Dell EMC and VMware support the usage of NVMe devices
for hosting virtual machines with the creation of VMFS. For more information about VMFS, see
Understanding VMFS Datastores.
Note: Surprise removal of NVMe device when it is in use by the VMFS is supported by Dell EMC and VMware
from VMware ESXi 7.0 onwards. However, surprise removal is not supported by VMware ESXi 6.x versions
when the device is in use.
• Raw Device Mapping (RDM): RDM provides virtual machines with direct access to a LUN. Dell EMC
and VMware support the usage of NVMe devices for RDM use case.
Note: Surprise removal of NVMe device when it is configured as an RDM is not supported by Dell EMC and
VMWare.
• VMware vSAN: VMware vSAN supports NVMe devices as a cache and also as a capacity tier. For
information about the Dell EMC vSAN certified ReadyNodes supported, see the vSAN HCL from the
VMware Compatibility Guide.
Note: Surprise removal of NVMe device when it is in use by the vSAN cache or the capacity tier is supported
by Dell EMC and VMWare.
• Host swap cache: The host cache is a shared swap area created for virtual machines. It is generally
created on a low latency device such as solid-state drives and is used as a write-back cache for
virtual machine swap files. Dell EMC supports usage of NVMe devices for this use case.
Note: Surprise removal of NVMe device when it is in use for host cache is supported by Dell EMC and
VMWare. However, users must note that applications or guest operating systems are prone to failure
depending on their usage.
• PCIe passthrough: Dell EMC does not support NVMe device as a passthrough device for generic
use cases. However, there are appliance use cases from Dell EMC that support this use case
explicitly.
Note: Surprise removal of NVMe device when it is configured as PCIe passthrough is not supported by Dell
EMC and VMWare.
Note: Dell EMC does not support booting VMware ESXi from an NVMe device. For more information, see
Dell Express Flash NVMe PCIe SSD User’s Guide.
Dell EMC does not support using an NVMe device for PCIe passthrough or VMDirectPath I/O or for Dynamic
Direct Path I/O use cases. For more information, see VMware Knowledge Base article 2142307.