VSC 4 missing VAAI and getting no VMs for aligned/not aligned

[fletch2007]

When will VAAI plugin be available ? The release notes say "coming soon"

And the alignment detection is returning no VMs found although my datastores are full of 95% aligned VMs

[BGOMBERG1]

I just had a 3240 installed and it is running 8.1.1. I am running vSphere 5.0 and I have installed the NFS plugin via vmware update manager. The plugin installed successfully however my NFS data store is still show hardware acceleration is "not supported". What am I missing here? Do I have to run the install via the VSC?

[JANDREWARTHA]

Did you reboot your hosts?

[BGOMBERG1]

The remediation process reboots them automatically. It seems however that I just answered my own question. I followed these instructions  https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=3013414 installed via the VSC tools menu and refreshed the datastore. It is now "supported". The install processes through the VSC updates the firewall policies and option values which seemed to do the trick. I am now worried about the installation I performed via update manager and if I perhaps should not have done that?

[fletch2007]

There are 2 pieces to install  - VSC 4 and the more recently released NFS VAAI plugin (which is not installed via update manager, but a manual .vib download to your vCenter, then rename the file...just follow the PDF doc off the link below, and you will need to reboot the ESXi host per the doc)

Download the NetApp NFS Plug-in for VMware VAAI:

1. a)  Go to the Software Downloads page at support.netapp.com/NOW/cgi-bin/software.
2. b)  Scroll down and click NetApp NFS Plug-in for VMware VAAI.
3. c)  Select the ESXi platform.
4. d)  Download either the offline bundle (.zip) or online bundle (.vib) of the most recent plug-in.

I tried cloning a VM and VAAI was obviously not involved - the IO still went through the ESXi host.

Linked clones are supposed to be faster?  Still trying to find the Netapp doc describing the NFS operations for vmware that VAAI benefits.

[D_BEREZENKO]

In the knowledge base there is steps for NetApp VAAI plugin installation (VSC 4 should be installed). Do not forget to reboot your hosts.

[fletch2007]

Ok, I believe I've satisfied all the requirements to get VSC 4 to show me my unaligned VMs (ESXi 5.1, OnTap 8.1.1, VAAI NFS .vib, rebooted etc)

But I still see no VMs in the folders:

I will open a case with Netapp

[fletch2007]

Case No. 2003630236

[JANDREWARTHA]

See the earlier message:

"First, I'd like to make sure that folks understand there is no relationship between the Online Alignment feature in VSC 4.0 and the VAAI plugin for NAS. We are expecting to post the NFS VAAI plugin soon. Note that the first release supports requires Data ONTAP 8.1 running in cluster mode; NFS VAAI support for 7-mode is expected to be available in Data ONTAP 8.1.1.

The online alignment feature in VSC 4.0 supports VMFS datastores only"

[dburkland]

As others have said the online alignment tool is only available for VMFS.

In regards to VAAI, have you enabled it on the filer by running the "options nfs.vstorage.enable" command?

[fletch2007]

Will online alignment eventually be supported for NFS datastores?

Yes we have the setting on

nfs.vstorage.enable

on

Cloning a VM was no faster with VAAI - which operations are accelerated with VAAI on NFS?

thanks

[nick_walford]

Great article here http://www.virtuallanger.com/2011/12/06/vaai-is-this-thing-on/ including how to determine if VAAI is actually doing anything.

He fixed it for me 😉

[fletch2007]

Thanks for the link  - I checked all the VAAI boxes and cloned a VM on NFS datastore - no esxtop VAAI counters moved

In fact, you can see the NFS counters are '-' instead of zero -

@that1guynick commented 11 months ago "doing some deep testing of NFS VAAI offload that will be supported in the next (8.1) release of DataONTAP coming soon!"

Well I guess that schedule slipped - we are on 8.1.1 and still no NFS VAAI support? (even though the NFS datastore is listed as "supported" in vCenter)