I was browsing the VMTN community and noticed a great tip from my colleague Mostafa Khalil and I believe it is worth sharing with you. The original question was: “Does anybody have a list of which arrays support VAAI (or a certain subset of the VAAI features)?”. Mostafa updated the post a couple of days back with the following reponse which also shows the capabilities of the 2.0 version of the VMware HCL:
A new version of the Web HCL will provide search criteria specific to VAAI.
As of this date, the new interface is still in “preview” stage. You can access it by clicking the “2.0 preview” button at the top of the page which is at: http://www.vmware.com/go/hcl/
- The criteria are grouped under Features Category, Features and Plugin’s.
- Features Category: Choice of “All” or “VAAI-Block”
- Features: Choice of “All”, Block Zero”, “Full Copy”, “HW Assisted Locking” and more.
- Plugin’s: Choice of “All” and any of the listed plugins.
Unfortunately there appear to be some glitches when it comes to listing all the arrays correctly, but I am confident that it will be fixed soon… Thanks Mostafa for the great tip.
Hi Duncan,
there is definitely a discrepancy between technical marketing in HCLs like these and reality. E.g. we have a EMC CX4-960 and a EMC CX4-480 and we cannot us VAAI at all because we use PowerPath/VE.
I talked to Chad Sakac who will try to push EMC to bring things further. We have a case open on this problem since a couple of months – no progress since then.
Why do HCLs point out that things are tested and validated and officially named as “compatible” when there are known issues?
Regards,
daniel