Configure Host Cache with VMFS Datastore in vSphere Environment

Enable your ESXi host to swap to the host cache. You can also change the amount of space allocated for the host cache.

Your ESXi hosts can use a portion of a flash-backed storage entity as a swap cache shared by all virtual machines.

The host-level cache is made up of files on a low-latency disk that ESXi uses as a write-back cache for virtual machine swap files. All virtual machines running on the host share the cache. Host-level swapping of virtual machine pages makes the best use of potentially limited flash device space.

Prerequisites

Create a VMFS datastore using flash devices as backing. See Create a vSphere VMFS Datastore.

Procedure

1. In the vSphere Client, navigate to the ESXi host.
2. Click the Configure tab.
3. Under Storage, click Host Cache Configuration.
4. Select the flash datastore in the list and click the Edit icon.
5. Allocate appropriate space for host cache.
6. Click OK.