How to determine if xcopy is being utilized for storage vmotions

[TheVMinator]

My array is VAAI and xcopy capable.  Is there a way to look back at storage vmotions that happened during a given day, and confirm that in fact xcopy was utilized to allow the array to do the copying or whether the hypervisor did the copying?

Thanks!

[TheVMinator]

anyone?

[vPatrickS]

Hi

esxtop (press, u,f and add VAAI stats "o") is able to show you some VAAI stats. I'm not 100% sure but CLONE_RD (Reads) and CLONE_WR (Writes) should be able to show you if VAAI is being utilized.

If you storage array allows to monitor IOPS/MBs granular on disks, target ports, etc. you should be able to observe a minor load on the target ports and a higher load on your disks/pool.

Regards

Patrick

[TheVMinator]

Great thanks for the info.  That helps me if I am running esxtop while the svmotion is taking place.  But what if I need to know after it happened whether xcopy was used?  Or how can I tell based on current configuration settings before it happens whether xcopy will be used?

[mcowger]

No way to know after the fact.

Before the fact, you could make sure that the host shows the storage as VAAI capable, and that the transfer meets all the requirements for a XCOPY accelerated xfer.

[rickardnobel]

TheVMinator wrote:

But what if I need to know after it happened whether xcopy was used? 

You might be able to tell later by study the historic performance charts for your storage adapters. If you see large number of reads and write (equal to the size of the VMDK) at the time of the Storage vMotion then VAAI XCOPY was not used... But likely not a practical way.

TheVMinator wrote:

Or how can I tell based on current configuration settings before it happens whether xcopy will be used?

If you see the "Clone" primitive as supported it will be used, most exact view is from the command line: http://rickardnobel.se/verify-vaai-from-gui-and-command-line

[admin]

You can check the vmkernel log messages for the XCOPY primitve "0x83" to verify if XCOPY is being utilised, also you can check on the storage end, if the counter is visible, not sure how go about it, you check with your storage vendor to verify is the counter is visible on the storage or not.

[vPatrickS]

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[TheVMinator]

OK thanks - If log insight is being used, and ESXI host logs are being sent to log insight, could you somehow query the log insight logs for the xcopy primitive being associated with a given storage vmotion?

[admin · Accepted solution]

I have not used log insight per say but if the logs can be extracted from it, then we can query for the scsi opcode 0x83 to check, if xcopy is being utilized, eg: Cmd(0x41248092e240) "0x42" , CmdSN 0x13bb23 to dev "naa.xxxxxxxx", 0x42 is ("UNMAP" in this case)

[TheVMinator]

Ok thanks