How to Emulate an SSD Virtual Disk on a Virtual Machine based on SSD lun's/disks.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

The output of cat /sys/block/sda/queue/rotational is shown by default as "1" On Ubuntu Linux VM, while the requirement was to show as "0".

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Resolution

1. Ensure that the SSD option is enabled for SSD-based disks/LUNs as per the article: Enabling the SSD option on SSD based disks/LUNs that are not detected as SSD by default
   
   # esxcli storage core device list -d <naa device ID> | grep SSD
   
   
   
   
2. Power off the VM
   
   
3. To configure a specific virtual disk to appear as an SSD, you need to add the following in the VM configuration parameters:
   
   scsiX:Y.virtualSSD = 1  (Where X is the controller ID and Y is the disk ID of the Virtual Disk.)
   
   
4. Once the VM is powered on, we can see the result of cat /sys/block/sda/queue/rotational successfully shows as "0"
   
   

Additional Information

The steps provided are for Ubuntu OS based VM; however, the same concept would work for other Linux flavors.