Huawei VMware VAAI Technical White Paper PDF

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VMware VAAI Technical White
Paper

Issue 01
Date 201205

HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD.

VMware VAAI Technical White Paper SECRET

Issue 1.1 Copyright Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. Page 2 of 11

Copyright Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. 2012. All rights reserved.
No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior
written consent of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

Trademarks and Permissions
and other Huawei trademarks are trademarks of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
All other trademarks and trade names mentioned in this document are the property of their respective
holders.

Notice
The purchased products, services and features are stipulated by the contract made between Huawei and
the customer. All or part of the products, services and features described in this document may not be
within the purchase scope or the usage scope. Unless otherwise specified in the contract, all statements,
information, and recommendations in this document are provided "AS IS" without warranties, guarantees or
representations of any kind, either express or implied.
The information in this document is subject to change without notice. Every effort has been made in the
preparation of this document to ensure accuracy of the contents, but all statements, information, and
recommendations in this document do not constitute the warranty of any kind, express or implied.

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
Address: Huawei Industrial Base
Bantian, Longgang
Shenzhen 518129
People's Republic of China
Website: http://www.huawei.com
Email: support@huawei.com



Contents
1 Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................... 4
2 Introduction.................................................................................................................................... 5
3 Solution ........................................................................................................................................... 6
3.1 Block Zeroing ................................................................................................................................................ 6
3.2 Full Copy ........................................................................................................................................................ 7
3.3 Hardware Assisted Locking ....................................................................................................................... 7
3.4 How to Disable VAAI ................................................................................................................................. 8
3.5 Application Scenarios of VAAI ................................................................................................................. 9
4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 10
5 Acronyms and Abbreviations ................................................................................................... 11



1 Executive Summary
In a virtual server environment, the communication between the storage hardware and the
Hypervisor (a management program) is complicated. To simplify and facilitate the
communication, vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) is developed by VMware. VAAI
specifies separate duties for the Hypervisor and storage array: Virtualization tasks are in the
charge of the Hypervisor and storage tasks are delegated to the storage array. This maximizes
the business effectiveness of the Hypervisor and storage array.
VAAI enables storage array manufacturers to integrate their storage hardware and applications
with vSphere. With VAAI, some storage operations like cloning can be performed offline on
the storage array instead of hosts in a more efficient way. After delegating some tasks to the
storage array, hosts monitor the task-performing process instead of performing these tasks
with their own resources. Compared with the hosts, the storage array performs better in
processing storage data and offers quicker responses to service requests.
The current VAAI incorporates the following three new features to improve performance:
Block Zeroing
Full Copy
Hardware Assisted Locking



2 Introduction
VAAI is designed to offload storage-related operations on the VMware ESX server to the
storage array. It reduces the resource consumption and improves the performance of the ESX
server. The three features incorporated in VAAI are described as follows:
Block Zeroing: This feature delivers simultaneous block zeroing (also referred to as
zero initialization) performed on the storage array instead of the ESX server. It
shortens the time for zero initialization of virtual disks.
Full Copy: This feature delivers copying of data within a storage array by delegating
data copying operations on the ESX server to the storage array. With Full Copy, data
can be written to the storage array before the ESX server reads all the data. This
improves the efficiency of the operations such as virtual machine deployment and
Storage vMotion.
Hardware Assisted Locking: This feature delivers block-level locking controls on
virtual machines. By changing LUN-level locking controls to block-level locking
controls, Hardware Assisted Locking allows more concurrent write I/Os and more
virtual machines per LUN, protects the metadata of VMFS, and increases scalability
of the ESX server.
VAAI helps customers benefit from:
Reduced latency of multiple operations on virtual machines
Lowered computing resource consumption
Lowered network resource consumption
Declined storage workload on virtual machines



3 Solution
3.1 Block Zeroing
All virtual disks need to be zeroed out before data is initially written to them. Zeroing out a
disk means that zeros are written to the data blocks that contain null data on a virtual disk to
eliminate any data possibly left by previous virtual machines. The defaulted "slow zeroing" of
virtual disks zeros out data blocks upon initial write requests, that is, data blocks are zeroed
out only when data is initially written to them. This severely affects the block zeroing
performance and the dated data may remain on the virtual disk that will be used by other
virtual machines. "Advance zeroing" of virtual disks zeros out all data blocks at creation of a
virtual disk. "Advance zeroing" is a substitute for "slow zeroing" and poses no impact on the
performance of initializing data blocks. However, "advance zeroing" is a time- and
resource-consuming formatting process, because a large amount of data is transferred from
the ESX or ESXi server to data blocks to be zeroed out on the storage array during this
process (this is also called "concurrent writes").
Block Zeroing offloads all block zeroing operations to the storage array and makes the
formatting process more efficient. It reduces the I/Os sent between the ESX server and the
storage array by at least ten elevenths and therefore speeds initialization of virtual disks.
Application scenario:
Quick provisioning of virtual disks that are eagerzeroedthick or zeroedthick in format: Both of
the two types of virtual disks need to be zeroed out for initialization. The storage array takes
over the block zeroing operations from virtual machines and completes the initialization task
quickly.



3.2 Full Copy
Full Copy implements operations of copying files from virtual disks, such as cloning of
virtual machines and deployment of new virtual machines from a template. It delivers
hardware acceleration on the storage array in an offline manner instead of file-level copying
operations on the ESX server.
Full Copy can be used in Storage vMotion to migrate data of a virtual machine between
storage arrays. It greatly speeds copying operations and helps finish the deployment of virtual
machines quickly. Therefore, it is applicable to scenarios such as frequent deployment of
virtual machines and simultaneous bulk deployment of virtual machines.
By delegating data copying operations on the ESX server to the storage array, Full Copy
reduces the I/Os sent between the ESX server and the storage array by at least ten elevenths
and therefore speeds operations such as deployment of virtual machines and Storage vMotion.
Application scenarios:
Quick bulk deployment of virtual machines: Through Full Copy, multiple virtual
machine images of the original virtual machine image (Golden Image) can be created on
a storage array quickly.
Storage vMotion acceleration: Full Copy delegates the virtual machine image migrating
operation in Storage vMotion to the storage array and therefore speeds Storage vMotion.

3.3 Hardware Assisted Locking
As a prerequisite to Storage vMotion, VMFS allows concurrent accesses from many hosts to
the same shared logical volume. VMFS has a built-in security mechanism that prevents a
virtual machine from being run or modified simultaneously by more than one host. vSphere
uses SCSI reservation a traditional file locking mechanism. This mechanism locks the
whole logical volume with the RESERVE SCSI command when a storage-related order is
executed, for example, when data of a snapshot is to be changed. This avoids access conflicts
but delays the completion of the storage tasks, because the host continues write accesses to
the logical volume only when the RELEASE SCSI command to unlock the logical volume is
returned.
The hardware assisted locking mechanism uses the Atomic Test and Set (ATS) commands to
lock specific data blocks on a logical volume in an offline manner. It does not need to lock the



whole logical volume. As a result, the unlocked data blocks on the logical volume are still
available for hosts. This helps to avoid performance decrease.
Through VMFS datastore, Hardware Assisted Locking allows the deployment of more virtual
machines per cluster and more virtual machines per logical volume. Hardware Assisted
Locking is implemented on the storage array and changes the locking granularity of multiple
VMware hosts from the LUN level to the block level. It increases the amount of concurrent
write I/Os, while decreasing the write latency with only one SCSI locking command.
Therefore, much more virtual machines per logical volume are allowed.
Application scenario:
Speeding of all VMFS locking operations, including start, shutdown, migration, and creation
of snapshot for virtual machines.

3.4 How to Disable VAAI
VAAI is enabled by default on vSphere 4.1 for storage arrays that support this function. VAAI
is to be disabled under some circumstances, for example, when it is incompatible with the
storage array or when the performance of the VAAI-enabled and VAAI-disabled storage
arrays is to be compared for testing purpose.
VAAI can be disabled through advanced settings of the host. To go to the advanced settings,
choose Configuration > Software > vSphere Client.
To disable Full Copy: Set DataMover.HardwareAcceleratedMove to 0.
To disable Block Zeroing: Set DataMover.HardwareAcceleratedInit to 0.
To disable Hardware Assisted Locking: Set VMFS3.HardwareAssistedLocking to 0.
You can also log in to the command line interface (CLI) of the host and run the following
commands to disable VAAI:
esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /DataMover/HardwareAcceleratedMove
esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /DataMover/HardwareAcceleratedInit
esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /VMFS3/HardwareAcceleratedLocking
Note: To enable VAAI, set the values of the above parameters to 1.



3.5 Application Scenarios of VAAI
VAAI, as a performance optimizing feature, optimizes the performance of some existing
functions instead of delivering new functions for the hosts.
VAAI mainly applies to the following scenarios (for reference):
Creating virtual disks
Installing operating systems
Cloning virtual machines
Deploying virtual machines from the template
Migrating virtual machines
Operating virtual machines



4 Conclusion
VAAI enables the ESX server to delegate storage operations to the storage array using defined
interfaces and therefore improves the performance of virtual machines. VAAI is supported on
V100R002 and later versions of the T series storage products.



5 Acronyms and Abbreviations
11Acronyms
Acronym Full Spelling
ATS Atomic Test and Set
CLI Command line interface
SCSI Small Computer System Interface
VAAI vStorage APIs for Array Integration
VMFS Virtual Machine File System

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