Using Flash Devices with ESXi

In your ESXi environment, you can use flash devices with several functionalities.

Table 1. Using Flash Devices with ESXi

Functionality	Description
vSAN	vSAN requires flash devices. For more information, see the Administering VMware vSAN documentation.
VMFS Datastores	You can create VMFS datastores on flash devices. Use the datastores for the following purposes: Store virtual machines. Certain guest operating systems can identify virtual disks stored on these datastores as flash virtual disks. See Identifying Flash Virtual Disks. Allocate datastore space for the ESXi host swap cache. See Configuring Host Swap Cache
Virtual Flash Resource (VFFS)	Set up a virtual flash resource and use it for the following functionalities: Use as Virtual Flash Read Cache for your virtual machines. See About VMware vSphere Flash Read Cache. Allocate the virtual flash resource for the ESXi host swap cache. This method is an alternative way of host cache configuration that uses VFFS volumes instead of VMFS datastores. See Configure Host Swap Cache with Virtual Flash Resource. If required by your vendor, use the virtual flash resource for I/O caching filters. See Filtering Virtual Machine I/O.