vSphere Storage - ESXi 5.1 - Documentation - VMware

vSphere Storage
Verify Hardware Acceleration Status for NAS
In addition to the client, you can use the esxcli command to verify the hardware acceleration status of the
NAS device.
In the procedure, --server=server_name specifies the target server. The specified target server prompts you
for a user name and password. Other connection options, such as a configuration file or session file, are
supported. For a list of connection options, see Getting Started with vSphere Command-Line Interfaces.
Prerequisites
Install vCLI or deploy the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) virtual machine. See Getting Started with
vSphere Command-Line Interfaces. For troubleshooting , run esxcli commands in the ESXi Shell.
Procedure
u Run the esxcli --server=server_name storage nfs list command.
The Hardware Acceleration column in the output shows the status.
Hardware Acceleration Considerations
When you use the hardware acceleration functionality, certain considerations apply.
Several reasons might cause a hardware-accelerated operation to fail.
For any primitive that the array does not implement, the array returns an error. The error triggers the ESXi
host to attempt the operation using its native methods.
The VMFS data mover does not leverage hardware offloads and instead uses software data movement when
one of the following occurs:
n The source and destination VMFS datastores have different block sizes.
n The source file type is RDM and the destination file type is non-RDM (regular file).
n The source VMDK type is eagerzeroedthick and the destination VMDK type is thin.
n The source or destination VMDK is in sparse or hosted format.
n The source virtual machine has a snapshot.
n The logical address and transfer length in the requested operation are not aligned to the minimum
alignment required by the storage device. All datastores created with the vSphere Client or the
vSphere Web Client are aligned automatically.
n The VMFS has multiple LUNs or extents, and they are on different arrays.
Hardware cloning between arrays, even within the same VMFS datastore, does not work.
224 VMware, Inc.