Intel 750 not showing delete support under ESXi?

[shopk]

Hi everyone, I've hit an unexpected issue with some new Intel 750's (1.2TB) and ESXi 6 (latest update). I have installed the latest driver as recommended (to improve the performance of the drives) and while they are working I have noticed that ESXi isn't attempting to reclaim any free space (and forcing it doesn't work). A check of the VAAI values of each drive showed the following:

VAAI Plugin Name:

ATS Status: unsupported

Clone Status: unsupported

Zero Status: unsupported

Delete Status: unsupported

While I expected ATS/Clone/Zero to be unsupported, I didn't expect to see Delete as unsupported. Using a standard SSD through an AHCI controller will show Delete as supported (as TRIM seems to get converted to DISCARD/UNMAP).

Has anyone else seen this? I'm concerned that as a result my performance is going to degrade over time as there will be a lack of proper unmapping of free space.

[shopk]

Hi aleki, I appreciate that the 750 series are not on the VMware HCL, that said, they both use the same NVMe driver and both device models do advertise TRIM capability. From an ESXi perspective I am running ESXi 6 (not 5.5). The 5.5 is from the driver version from your website (as the 5.5 driver is used for 6.0 as well).

Is TRIM capability on the 750-series being deliberately disabled by your driver? (when running under ESXi 6)

[jbenavides]

Hello shopkins,

Please take into consideration that the Intel® SSD 750 series is a high performance consumer drive, recommended for use in client and workstations storage. The 750 is not certified for use with ESXi and it is not listed in the VMware Hardware Compatibility List.

The Intel® SSD 750 Series have many things in common with the Intel® SSD Data Center Family drives, so the same driver may recognize it and make it operational in your system; however, it does not have the same hardware and capabilities that the Data Center drives have. Since this is not a recommended configuration, we cannot guarantee that all features will be available for it in ESXi, hence, TRIM is not supported for the Intel® SSD 750 Series in VMware ESXi.

[shopk]

Jonathon,

I appreciate that the 750 isn't on the VMware HCL, however that doesn't really answer the question as to if it is VMware (specifically ESXi) that is disabling TRIM support for the 750-series or the updated driver provided by Intel. Many consumer SSD's provide TRIM capability under ESXi (I've tested a few myself) and running the 750 under Linux also shows TRIM capability, so I'd like to understand where support for TRIM is being disabled in this instance.

[jbenavides]

Hello shopkins,

I understand that this can be confusing. The Intel NVMe driver for VMware ESXi* 5.5 does not provide TRIM Support with the Intel® SSD 750 Series, and We understand that the native NVMe in VMware ESXi* 6.0 provides TRIM support for other NVMe drives.

Please keep in mind that the Intel® SSD 750 series were not designed to be used in Data Center environments, so we cannot guarantee full support and compatibility with ESXi*.

[SChan70]

Related question, did you have to do something special to get 750 to work with ESXi? Mine does not even show up in 5.5 U3? Thanks