It’s come up on my VAAI v2 (NFS) write-up that today there are only two products that offer vSphere Storage API for Array Integration for NAS (VAAI-NAS) integration with vSphere 5. We all know that more will be coming, and we all hope it’ll be sooner, rather than later. Personally, I predict that Isilon will be the next storage array with full VAAI-NAS support in VMware’s Compatibility Guides.
How can I be so confident? I’ve seen it in action, and next week you can, too.
This post is the second of two describing the features of the VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) version 2 as it works with vSphere 5. If you missed the first part, you can read it here: What Will VAAI v2 Do for You? Part 1 of 2: Block
My earlier posting covered the five features for block storage available in VAAI v2:
Probably the biggest and most-anticipated aspect of VAAI v2 was the the addition of advanced features for NFS datastores. VAAI v2 includes three features for NFS:
I’ll cover each of them in detail below.
Recently, someone pointed out to me that it was high time for me to write a follow-up to my “What Will VAAI Do for You?” posting. Written shortly after the launch of VMware vSphere 4.1, it is my most-read post on the Everything VMware at EMC Community.
Since I wrote it, though, VMware has released vSphere 5, which (among a slew of other great features) includes version 2 of VAAI, now called the vSphere Storage API for Array Integration. (You’re not mistaken: they’ve added a word to the name but kept the acronym the same — the acronym has achieved wide-spread common usage and changing it would only cause confusion.)
VAAI allows ESXi servers that use VAAI-enabled storage to work more effectively with storage. In most cases this means offloading storage-related tasks from the server to the array, but there’s more to it than just that, as I’ll explain in this posting. Continue reading
