Virtual machines and SSD disk: which is safer and which is faster?

Question

VMware

Today I transferred the system to an SSD drive, it seems there is still a place to transfer VMWare virtual machines to it. I thought hard - how will this affect the health of the disk? Two machines approximately on 20 gigabytes. Alternative options - to keep them on:
• SATA II HDD 1.5 TB WD15EURS (clearly so-so option)
• stripe of two Samsung HD502HI
What would the respected community advise? How harmful can a machine file be to an SSD? Will there be a significant increase in the speed of work, or is it still better to keep it on another screw?

Answer 1

As harmful as any other use of the disk, did you buy it to take care of it?
Well, you will change it under warranty and quickly turn around from the backup.

Answer 2

why buy an ssd and not use it? The virtual machine itself will not do anything bad to you with ssd, and the operating system can be slightly tweaked if desired. And yes, there is an increase (I have two virtual machines up, both on debian, one on ssd and the other on hdd. The difference is noticeable),

Answer 3

If write caching is enabled in the virtual machine settings, then disk access will be reduced to a minimum. And on reading the gain will be exact.

Answer 4

If you are talking about SSD wear, then
- depending on TRIM support
and also
- depending on how much RAM you have
and also
- the minimum free space that will remain on the SSD when filling virtual machines, saving their snapshots, states, etc. d. If less than 30% remains, then it is better not to,
and also
- the presence of a UPS.
If there is not enough RAM (4 or less), then it is better to place a swap of the entire system on the SSD, where, by the way, virtual machines will also be swapped. If there is a lot of RAM (12+), the entire cache fits in it, and the SSD is large, then you can safely place frequently used files on it. However, I would recommend this configuration:
- SSD under the system
- a mirror of two samsungs for all your projects and important data. Here you can also use virtual machines. not a stripe, because information is lost very easily and sadly from stripes.
- the third 1.5 TB disk for non-critical data (backups, distributions, movies, music)
This is based on the fact that it is cheaper to buy a new screw than to restore information from it from specialists, and also from the fact that the screws die suddenly, and also from the fact that SSD critically perceive power failures.

Answer 5

It all depends on the nature of the virtual machines, namely the R / W ratio.
For example, VDI infrastructure - many believe that installing an SSD will give a significant increase, but in VDI the ratio r / w 30/70 - f gj SSD write speed is not so much better than a good raid, but inferior in reliability.
In view of the requirements that you have, I would suggest using a combined approach - stripe for data, ssd for swap