Managing the FlashArray NFS VAAI VIB Component

VAAI Primitives

VMware provides the following features (often referred to as "primitives") with NFS-based VAAI:

• Full File Clone. This feature offloads the cloning or Storage vMotion of VMDKs (virtual disks) and VMs to the array. Instead of ESXi transmitting unneccessary reads and writes over the data path, a singular operation is sent to inform the underlying array of what VMs file or files to directly copy. This reduces network traffic and often accelerates the overall operation.
• Fast File Clone. This feature offloads the creation of snapshots or Linked Clones to the array. This results in similar benefits to Full File Clone but is focused on snapshot/file redirection.
• Reserve Space. By default virtual disks on NFS datastores are created as "thin" this means the capacity is not allocated until it is actually written to similar to a traditional file on a file system (files grow as written to). This primitive allows the NFS array to fully reserve the provisioned space of the VMDK upon creation.
• Extended Statistics. By default, ESXi only has insight into basic capacity reporting for NFS datastores that are provided natively by the NFS specification. This primitive enhances this metric set by providing more insight into capacity utilization for thinly-provisioned devices.

• Native Snapshot Support.

• Disk Type Reporting.

• UNMAP. The Unmap primitive supports the space reclamation for VMs that run on thin provisioned NFS 3 datastores. It includes two primitives:

  • GET_UNMAP_GRANULARITY primitive gets called during a VM power-on operation. It fetches the UNMAP related parameters from the storage backend. The parameters are expected to be filled by the storage vendor specific NAS plugin.
  • UNMAP primitive gets called when the guest VM issues UNMAP requests to free the space consumed by VMDK files. For example, file deletion can trigger UNMAP if the guest OS filesystem supports the Discard option. The guest VM provides region of a VMDK file, from which the backend storage can reclaim space. After receiving the guest OS UNMAP request, the NFS storage layer in ESX passes the request to the NAS VAAl plugin to execute the UNMAP request on the storage provider.

Downloading the VAAI VIB Component

The best way to install the vSphere API for Array Integration VMware Installation Bundle (VAAI VIB) zip component is directly on ESXi from the web URL listed below in the ESXCLI Method. If the ESXi host does not have access to that URL directly, the zip package can be downloaded below.

Release notes for the VAAI VIB Component can be found here.

Always confirm the checksum (SHA256 is preferred) before installing into ESXi.