In this first test, the virtual machine was configured as a template residing on a VMFS on a FlashArray volume (naa.624a9370753d69fe46db318d00011015). A single virtual machine was deployed from this template onto a different datastore (naa.624a9370753d69fe46db318d00011014) on the same FlashArray. The test was run twice, once with XCOPY disabled and again with it enabled. With XCOPY enabled, the “deploy from template” operation was far faster and both the IOPS and throughput from the host were greatly reduced for the duration of the operation.
Figure 8. Deploy from template operation with XCOPY disabled
Figure 9. Deploy from template operation with XCOPY enabled
Figure 10 and Figure 11 show the vSphere Web Client log of the “deploy from template” operation times, and it can be seen from the comparison that the deployment operation time was reduced from over two minutes down to seven seconds. The following images show the perfmon graphs gathered from esxtop comparing total IOPS and total throughput when XCOPY is enabled and disabled. Note that the scales are identical for both the XCOPY-enabled and XCOPY-disabled charts.
Figure 10. Deploy from template throughput reduction
Figure 11. Deploy from template IOPS reduction