NVMe Drive Selection for Memory Tiering Explained
Broadcom, Friday, September 18th, 2026
Broadcom explains how to choose NVMe drives for VMware Cloud Foundation memory tiering deployments.
Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation team explains memory tiering, which extends system memory using fast NVMe SSDs so hosts can run larger workloads and consolidate more virtual machines without buying more DRAM.
The post focuses on drive selection, covering the endurance, latency and throughput characteristics that determine whether a given NVMe device is suitable for the tier. It explains why consumer and read-optimized drives fail under tiering write patterns.
Guidance is given on sizing the NVMe tier relative to DRAM for different consolidation targets.