Create a raid 1 raid set with 2 of the flash drives. This will be your FAST Cache. This is not a tier of storage it is solely FAST Cache. The 3rd would be a hot spare for that raid set.

For a quick overview of FAST Cache go here to start with.

EMC VNX FAST CACHE | David Ring

As always. Google is your friend.

Will

Use two of the EFD disks and create FAST Cache - the third EFD is your spare. See the note above with the attachment for more information. FAST Cache is a global resource.

The first four disks (disks 0-3) are called the Vault Drives - these hold the Operating System for the array and can not be used in a Pool. You can use these four disks for a small raid group, but only for low IO LUNs - high IO LUNs will impact performance.

You also might want to review the White Paper for Virtual Provisioning (attached) for some best practices and SQL Best Practices (attached).

With Databases, you normally have three types of LUNs - DB Files, Logs and Temp. The DB Files preform best when using a Raid Type 5 with FAST Cache enabled (a Pool). For Logs and Temp, you should have these LUNs in a separate Pool or Raid Group using Riad Type 10 (mirrored) and FAST Cache is NOT enabled for these two LUNs.

This would mean that you have 16 usable disk (-4 for the vault, -1 for a spare, and -3 EFD). You would need a Pool for the VM's and the DB Files and a separate Raid Group/Pool for the Logs and Temp LUNs. for Logs and Temp you might be able use use two disks in a Raid 10 1+1, leaving 14 disks for your Pool.

glen

Thank you very much for the advice and links, I thought to do so, but first could not get FAST Cache enabler from EMC.

Vlad.

Speak to your sales team.

If they sold you FAST Cache drives I do not see why they would not have ordered the enabler for you as well.

Check your delivery paperwork form EMC as well. It should be on there.