Often the storage offload capabilities of a storage array (VAAI in vSphere terms) need additional software to integrate with ESXi. This post will walk you through installing the NetApp plugin required to leverage VAAI on an NFS datastore. Good luck!
1. Download the software from this link. We want the offline .zip file.
NetApp® NFS Plug-in 1.0 for VMware® VAAI
2. WinSCP to the host and create the ‘/opt/netapp’ directory. Copy the .ZIP file to that directory.
3. SSH to the host and run the following command. Take note of the name of the package. In this case, it is “NetAppNasPlugin.”
esxcli software sources vib list –d file:///<full path>
4. Install the package
esxcli software vib install -n <plugin_name> -d file:///<full path>
5. Reboot the host
6. When the host is back up, run the following command to ensure the plugin was loaded.
esxcli software vib list | grep NetApp
And that’s all! You can now leverage array offload capabilities (VAAI) on your NetApp NFS datastores!
For official NetApp documentation on this process, see the following document:
