I’ve been following a thread on the community forums closely around the AHCI disk controller. This disk controller is an on-board disk controller which caused some problems when used in conjunction with VSAN because of a driver problem. Note that this disk controller is not on the HCL and is not recommend for use in a production environment or ANY environment where reasonable performance is expected and endurance / availability is key. Many homelabbers used this controller however and I am happy to say that it was reported by Philzy that this fix mentioned in KB 2079729 appears to have solved the issues experienced.
For all those wanting to use VSAN in their homelabs… Game on!
bsarda says
Great news!
I’ll try this in my home lab asap!
Thanks for sharing that.
philzy says
Hi! By the way, sata-xahci driver from http://www.v-front.de/2013/11/how-to-make-your-unsupported-sata-ahci.html works quite pretty with VSAN.
Matt says
Would be curious to hear from other folks about what kind of experience they’re getting in an AHCI setup with 5.5U2 and VSAN. I’ve got 3x Shuttle SH87R6 boxes, each with onboard controller, 1x Kingston SSDNow V300 240GB SATA SSD and 1x Seagate 1.5TB 7200RPM SATA – performance is miserable. Under <100 IOPs load, I'm seeing steady Write latency in excess of 1.4 SECONDS!
Philzy says
Hi! I answered in the https://communities.vmware.com/message/2444807#2444807