VMware: Increasing VM read performances using vFRC

Virtual Flash Read Cache (vFRC) is a VMware storage solution that leverages host-side SSDs to create a caching layer for VMs.
It allows to offload IOs from SAN to host SSDs. vFRC is defined on a per-VM basis and affects only VM reads while writes are still write-through to SAN.
SSD acts only as caching stage, SAN or DAS is still used as persistent storage. A prerequisite for enabling vFRC on a host is one or more host local SSDs (up to eight) without an existing filesystem on top of them, this is because vFRC will format them using a new filesystem, named Virtual Flash FileSystem (VFFS), a VMFS highly optimized for SSDs.
It is important to say that by enabling vFRC you can still run vMotion, HA and DRS in your cluster.

vFRC reserves a portion of space on VFFS volume per-VM basis and for individual vmdks, this means that if a VM has more drives (i.e. more vmdks) you can select which one, if any, to enable vFRC on. This reservation takes place only when VMs are powered on, when VMs are powered off chaching reserved space is reclaimed and freed.

vFRC has the following requirements:

• vCenter Server 5.5
• At least one ESXi 5.5 host
• vFRC is configured & managed only by using vSphere Web Client
• SSDs without filesystem. If VMFS or other filesystem is already on SSD remove it in order to create VFFS.

And the following maximums:

• One Virtual Flash Resource (VFFS) per vSphere host
• Eight Flash devices per Virtual Flash Resource (VFFS)
• 4TB physical Flash-based device size
• 400GB of Virtual Flash Read Cache per Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK)
• 4TB of Virtual Flash Host Swap Cache per vSphere host
• 32TB Virtual Flash Resource total size


To enable vFRC open vSphere Web Client, select one host then Manage -> Settings -> Virtual Flash -> Virtual Flash Management Resource -> Add Capacity

All available host local SSDs without VMFS on top of them will be available for vFRC.

Select one or more SSDs and choose how much space will be used for vFRC. There is a minimum value of 1GB and a maximum value equal to SSD's capacity, but you can configure any value between these two limits.

Once added Virtual Flash Resource Management will reflect the size of your vFRC pool.

vFRC is enabled on selected host. If needed repeat the same procedure for other hosts in your cluster.

Next step is to define the VMs that will access vFRC caching layer.

Click on desired VM(s), or create a new one like I did, and go to Edit Settings, expand Hard Disk properties and choose how much MB/GB of vFRC space will this disk use.

If you click Advanced option you can also choose blocksize in KB according to your VM workload characterization.

Please bear in mind that vFRC is only used for reads, hence when VM guest OS reads a data block on a vmdk cached by vFRC, vFRC caching software fetches from SAN that data block plus a portion of data that will be likely soon to be used by VM based on principle of locality and stores it on host SSD.

vFRC does not improve write IOs. Data written to vmdks will pass-by vFRC and is written-through directly to SAN.

Another consideration is that not all workloads may benefit from vFRC, it could bring extremely high benefits to certain IOs and not to others, this primarily depends on workload patterns.