VAAI Support for vmware esxi

[vanhaakonnen]

Hello,

some vendors (Synology, Nexentastor, QNAP) have implemented VAAI for vmware esxi. This gives a great performance boost when i.e. cloning vms.
Is this possible in FreeNAS?

Thanks

VanHaakonnen

 

[jpaetzel]

It's on our roadmap, as well as integrating ZFS snapshots with VMWare APIs, but not currently available.

 

[khogan]

Has some work been done with this? I just installed FreeNAS 8.3.1-BETA1 and I noticed VAAI status is set to supported, but can't find anything in the release notes.

 

[firepowr]

I noticed this when I installed 8.3.0.

After running some tests, it does not seem to work. With VAAI, cloning or deploying templates on vsphere/vcenter on the same storage (freenas) should be much quicker and should not utilize the network. From the observation from my test server the cloning and deployed templates the data show the data going out of the NIC and back into the same storage. I believe its a false positive for "Hardware Acceleration: Supported"

Has some work been done with this? I just installed FreeNAS 8.3.1-BETA1 and I noticed VAAI status is set to supported, but can't find anything in the release notes.
View attachment 1681

 

[datnus]

Would you mind running this on esxi?
And what is your freenas version?

Code:

esxcli storage core device vaai status get -d t10.bla bla
VAAI Plugin Name:
ATS Status: supported
Clone Status: unsupported
Zero Status: supported
Delete Status: unsupported

I want to see clone status / delete status is "supported".
VAAI seems to be "half-supported" since FreeNAS 8.0.4

BTW, a good article about Vmware and iSCSI Unmap / VAAI
http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/04/vaai-thin-provisioning-block-reclaimunmap-in-action.html

Thanks so much.

 

[vanhaakonnen]

Same here with version 8.3.0... VAAI for NFS still not supported. iSCSI seems to be half way supported...

Code:

/vmfs/volumes/8ef46890-0789d54f # esxcli storage core device vaai status get
t10.FreeBSD_iSCSI_Disk______00151737f861010_________________
   VAAI Plugin Name: 
   ATS Status: supported
   Clone Status: unsupported
   Zero Status: supported
   Delete Status: unsupported

But I have another strange problem. I can boot my esxi-hosts for example 5 times. Two times they come up and show my NFS mounts from my FreeNAS. The other three times the nfs volumes are not mounted and the esxi hosts say me that the storage system is not available... from the console of the esxi I can still ping my FreeNAS... I have no idea what than can be...

 

[datnus]

Same here with version 8.3.0... VAAI for NFS still not supported. iSCSI seems to be half way supported...

Code:

/vmfs/volumes/8ef46890-0789d54f # esxcli storage core device vaai status get
t10.FreeBSD_iSCSI_Disk______00151737f861010_________________
   VAAI Plugin Name: 
   ATS Status: supported
   Clone Status: unsupported
   Zero Status: supported
   Delete Status: unsupported

But I have another strange problem. I can boot my esxi-hosts for example 5 times. Two times they come up and show my NFS mounts from my FreeNAS. The other three times the nfs volumes are not mounted and the esxi hosts say me that the storage system is not available... from the console of the esxi I can still ping my FreeNAS... I have no idea what than can be...

Your NFS server is slow? Or NFS service is not reliable? Telnet your NFS port?

 

[vanhaakonnen]

My esxi-hosts boot via iSCSI from my FreeNAS-system and the datastores comes from the same FreeNAS via NFS. It is not slow or anything else... Sometimes when the esxi-hosts comes up the nfs-datastores are not available. If I reboot two or three times they are... When mounted I can transfer gigabit wirespeed without a problem. I will check the NFS-Port next time via telnet (good idea). My first idea was that this could also be related to VAAI problems - but when I disable VAAI on the esxi-hosts there is no improvement of the behavoir