Disabling VAAI in VMware vSphere

vSphere APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) is a set of features introduced in vSphere 4.1, which allow for offloading certain storage related tasks (e.g. VM cloning, disk zeroing etc.) from VMware hosts to the storage systems. VAAI is included in vSphere Enterprise and Enterprise Plus licensing and enabled by default on ESXi 4.1 and later hosts , but in order to work properly, VAAI also needs to be supported by the underlying storage system (usually achieved through a storage firmware update). 

There are some setups in which  it is recommended to completely disable VAAI - e.g. when using an EMC RecoverPoint fabric splitter or EMC CX4 array with vSphere 5. This blog post describes how to disable the three base VAAI features from vSphere 4.1, as well as "Space Reclamation" (SCSI UNMAP) feature introduced in vSphere 5. Disabling VAAI is done on a per-host basis and doesn't require host restart.

vSphere 4.1 VAAI features include:

• Atomic Test & Set (ATS) - advanced VMFS file locking intended to replace traditional SCSI locks; host parameter is called HardwareAcceleratedLocking
• Clone Blocks/Full Copy/XCOPY - for offloading copying/cloning/storage vMotion operations to the array; host parameter is called HardwareAcceleratedMove
• Zero Blocks/Write Same - for offloading disk zeroing (when creating eager zeroed thick disks) to the storage array;  host parameter is called HardwareAcceleratedInit

Disabling VAAI using vSphere Client

In order to disable the three base VAAI features, select your host in the vCenter inventory, choose the Configuration tab and select Advanced Options. Then change the following settings to 0:

DataMover.HardwareAcceleratedMove


DataMover.HardwareAcceleratedInit


VMFS3.HardwareAcceleratedLocking

Disabling VAAI using esxcli

Note: help on accessing the host through CLI can be found in a previous blogpost - VMware ESXi 5 CLI Commands Part 1.

In order to disable VAAI features using esxcli commands through ESXi shell or SSH in vSphere 5, type away:

# esxcli system settings advanced set --int-value 0 --option /DataMover/HardwareAcceleratedMove

# esxcli system settings advanced set --int-value 0 --option /DataMover/HardwareAcceleratedInit

# esxcli system settings advanced set --int-value 0 --option /VMFS3/HardwareAcceleratedLocking

Disabling SCSI UNMAP

This is a new VAAI feature introduced in vSphere 5, which allows for reclaiming space on the storage system after a file is deleted from a VMFS datastore. Shortly after vSphere 5 was released, it was determined that this feature can cause problems with certain storage systems and storage vMotion / snapshot creation operations, so VMware recommended disabling it completely (see VMware KB 2007427 - Disabling VAAI Thin Provisioning Block Space Reclamation (UNMAP) in ESXi 5.0). 

Since ESXi 5.0 Patch 2 (ESXi build number 515841, released on December 15, 2011) this feature is disabled by default (ESXi 5.0U1 keeps it disabled, but introduces an option to run Space Reclamation manually from the CLI - see VMware KB 2014849), so if you're using ESXi 5.0 with a lower build number, you can either patch your hosts to Patch 2 level, or use the following workaround from the CLI.

To check whether this feature is enabled on your host:

# esxcli system settings advanced list --option /VMFS3/EnableBlockDelete

To disable it, type:

# esxcli system settings advanced set --int-value 0 --option /VMFS3/EnableBlockDelete