VMware UNMAP directly from Guest OS with Freenas Backend

[azev]

I came across this article as I was trying to validate if VAAI really works on Freenas with ISCSI. I got really exited and for the last 2 days I've been playing around trying to figure out how to get it to work on my setup.
Unfortunately I cannot get windows 2012R2 or 2016 to detect that it is on a thin provisioned disk no matter what I did.

Has anyone try this and get it to work ?? I wonder if it requires a specific storage backends to make it work.
I was able to find a different blog that shows it's working with pure storage backend, but no matter what I did I cant get it to work on freenas storage backend.

 

[TuxDude]

Last time I checked, FreeNAS doesn't support VAAI.

 

[dicecca112]

FreeNAS 9.3 Features - Support for VMware VAAI

Supposed to according to this blurb from 2014/

 

[TuxDude]

Ok, I was wrong - I don't really follow FreeNAS updates.

And when you look at the datastore in whatever vSphere client you are using, it is saying that hardware acceleration is supported?

 

[azev]

Yes they are supported, and I also found this interesting article about it.

 

[TuxDude]

Hmm, looks like it should be able to be made to work. I'd put 1/2 an hour into reproducing the setup and figuring it out, except that I've (hopefully temporarily) lost access to almost all of my gear, including both my ESXi boxes and the box I had been playing with the FreeNAS beta on.

 

[cheezehead]

VAAI on FreeNAS has been there since the 9.3 betas. I've used it in the past without having any issues.

Take a look at virten's post http://www.virten.net/2015/01/working-with-freenas-9-3-block-vaai-primitives/, it should help pin down what's showing up and what isn't.

 

[azev]

VAAI on FreeNAS has been there since the 9.3 betas. I've used it in the past without having any issues.

Take a look at virten's post http://www.virten.net/2015/01/working-with-freenas-9-3-block-vaai-primitives/, it should help pin down what's showing up and what isn't.

@cheezehead yes I did found that article and followed it... From what I can tell VAAI is working like it should on my system.
However what I am most interested in is enabling UNMAP feature directly from guest VM. If you read the article I linked on my original post, windows os supposedly able to detect that it is running on thin provisioned disk. My current setup is sparse zvol with thin provisioned vmdk on the vm, but for some reason I cannot get windows to detect thin provisioned disk and just showed as ssd.

 

[cheezehead]

@cheezehead yes I did found that article and followed it... From what I can tell VAAI is working like it should on my system.
However what I am most interested in is enabling UNMAP feature directly from guest VM. If you read the article I linked on my original post, windows os supposedly able to detect that it is running on thin provisioned disk. My current setup is sparse zvol with thin provisioned vmdk on the vm, but for some reason I cannot get windows to detect thin provisioned disk and just showed as ssd.

If your running anything older than Server 2016, it won't know what to do with it natively...you'd need a 3rd party utility for the reclamation within the OS. If your running Windows ontop of VMware....you'll need to enable reclamation (6.5) or manually kick off the reclaim operation (5.0-6.0).

 

[whitey]

@cheezehead yes I did found that article and followed it... From what I can tell VAAI is working like it should on my system.
However what I am most interested in is enabling UNMAP feature directly from guest VM. If you read the article I linked on my original post, windows os supposedly able to detect that it is running on thin provisioned disk. My current setup is sparse zvol with thin provisioned vmdk on the vm, but for some reason I cannot get windows to detect thin provisioned disk and just showed as ssd.

'Thin on thin...never a win' is my old saying! Or I should say a nice 'recipe for disaster' heh

 

[cheezehead]

'Thin on thin...never a win' is my old saying! Or I should say a nice 'recipe for disaster' heh

Running thin on thin for years in prod at work (for most workloads) without any issues. Yes you need to be mindful of over provisioning but even some storage vendors recommend the practice. The thin vmdk performance overhead isn't what is use to be years ago and some storage vendors recommend thinly provisioning the backend storage.

 

[nitrobass24]

I thought UNMAP for *nix was a VMFS6 feature. Specifically related to the Linux Guest OS SPC-4 support added in 6.5