VSAN 6.2 with 4Kn and 512e disks

[ingvargo]

Hi

have there been any change of Vmware support for disks with 512e and 4K Native drives with the release of VSAN 6.2?

with the older version of VSAN there was issues with these disks.

Support statement for 512e and 4K Native drives for VMware vSphere and VSAN (2091600) | VMware KB

BR

Ingvar

[srodenburg]

Not that i'm aware of. The reason being this:  (which still holds true).

"Lastly, for some guest workloads - like Exchange - the guest will create an IO workload that depends on what drive type is exposed to the guest. Since the guest continues to see a traditional 512 sector drive (aka 512n) this can mean non-optimal performance of Exchange guests on top of 512e drives."

VMware will not start to support 4K drives until they change this fundamental behaviour and start exposing 4k sectors to Guest OS'sen so they can benefit. Otherwise, you only create overhead.

[bobtorreyhpcom]

VMware,

Why can't you provide further technical details on how 512N/512e/4KN will be supported for 6.5 as well as existing 5.5 and 6.0 versions of ESX?  Is has been several months now that VMware hinted that there would be a new KB article stating VMware's support for 5.5/6.0. 

Customer demand for larger drive is very real, but we just can't claim support due to HCL.

Would be great if VMware would provide an update on this subject matter.

Thanks Bob Torrey

[lukejf]

Hi, I would also like to know when vmware will support 512e drives in esxi.

[depping · Accepted solution]

** VMware employee here ** AFAIK there will be no support for 512e or 4Kn for vSphere 6.0 and earlier. Support is planned for a future version of vSphere and VSAN and that is unfortunately all I can share at this point in public. If you have a local VMware contact they can share roadmap with you if needed under NDA.