Quick Tip: Marking an HDD as SSD or SSD as HDD in ESXi

Before you begin, you will need to identifythe storage device in which you wish to mark as an SSD or HDD. Use thefollowing ESXCLI command to do so:

esxcli storage core device list

In the screenshot above, we can see for ourdevice mpx.vmhba1.C0:T2:L0 shows "Is SSD" parameter asfalse. After running two commands below, we should then see that propertychange to true.

Marking HDD as SSD:

esxcli storage nmp satp rule add -sVMW_SATP_LOCAL -d mpx.vmhba1:C0:T2:L0 -o enable_ssd
esxcli storage core claiming reclaim -d mpx.vmhba1:C0:T2:L0

Marking SSD as HDD:

esxcli storage nmp satp rule add -sVMW_SATP_LOCAL -d mpx.vmhba1:C0:T1:L0 -o disable_ssd
esxcli storage core claiming reclaim -d mpx.vmhba1:C0:T1:L0

To perform the opposite, you simply justneed to add the disable_ssd option. If you receive an error regardinga duplicate rule, you will need to first remove the SATP rule and thenre-create with the appropriate option.