NVMe Memory Tiering Design and Sizing on VMware Cloud Foundation 9 Part 7: Advanced Configuration

Adjusting the DRAM:NVMe Ratio Securing the Tier: Encryption Option A: Host-Level Encryption Option B: Per-VM Encryption Opting Out: Disabling Memory Tiering for Critical VMs Summary of Advanced Parameters Final Thoughts Discover more from VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Blog Related Articles NVMe Memory Tiering Design and Sizing on VMware Cloud Foundation 9 Part 7: Advanced Configuration Automating Desired State Configuration using vSphere Configuration Profile APIs - Part 1 SAP HANA and SAP NetWeaver Support for vSphere in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 on Intel Xeon 6 CPUs with P-core and older CPUs This is the final installment of our series on Memory Tiering. In previous posts, we covered the architecture, design, sizing, and basic setup among other topics. Now, we’re diving into the advanced configuration. These settings are not necessary for this feature to be operational, but rather provides options for data encryption, and memory ratios among others. While the defaults in vSphere in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 are designed to “just work” for most environments, true optimization requires fine-tuning. Whether you are running virtual desktop workloads or databases, you need to know which levers to pull. Here is how to master the advanced parameters for memory ratios, per host and per VM encryption, as well as disabling per-VM tiering. By default, when you enable Memory Tiering, ESX sets a DRAM to NVMe ratio of 1:1, or 100% more memory coming from NVMe. This means if you have 512GB of DRAM, the host will have an additional 512GB of NVMe capacity as Tier 1 memory, resulting in 1TB of total memory. However, depending on your workloads, you might want to change this density. For example, in a VDI environment where cost-per-desktop is king, you might want a higher ratio (more NVMe per GB of DRAM). Conversely, for performance-heavy clusters, you might want to limit the NVMe tier size.