Today, second part of traffic flows series storage vMotion with VAAI.
Scenario: Storage vMotion of virtual machine VMDKs from VMFS2 datastore to VMFS5 datastore, storage supports VAAI.
- 2 ESX servers connected to shared storage ( in example I have FC storage Active/Active)
- VM runs on ESX1
- VAAI enabled on both, storage and ESX server
Storage vMotion initiated by vCenter server, ESX1 server sent “instructions” to storage that it wants to move data from VMFS2 to VMFS5. Storage starts move data between arrays and ESX1 monitor task progress. Whole job is done by storage, ESX only monitors task by sending frames with monitor orders to storage. VAAI reduces traffic over FC, overall time for storage vMotion and ESX resource use.
Detailed information about benefits with examples you can find in my earlier post, link below.
Traffic flows with VAAI enabled
[box type=”info”] How the traffic flows ? Part 1 – storage vMotion
VAAI – what is that ?[/box]
