ESXi 4.1 VAAI Plug-ins

[ClaytonSaid]

Hi All,

We have recently purchased a 3PAR P400 system as well as an MSA P2000 and were in the process of enabling VAAI on our ESX cluster to benefit from the added features.   The ESX media used for installation is HP-branded and thus was pre-loaded with a number of plug-ins (EMC, QLogic, LeftHand etc...). 

In one of the first steps of the 3PAR VAAI plug-in for vSphere user's guide, you are warned:

"Make sure your ESX host does not have another plug-in attached to the 3PAR device (e.g. VMW_VAAIP_T10)"  before installation.

We have a few questions at this stage:

- This particular plug-in is not installed but should I remove the other unused plug-ins ?

- We are planning to use 3PAR and P2000 simultaneously.  Is it OK to have both these plug-ins installed?

- If I understood correctly, all the plug-in does is to add the "intelligence" to send instructions to the array if this is VAAI-capable (and enabled).  However, given that these are LIVE ESX servers hosting hundreds of VMs and having a number of vLUNs presented to them, I need to ensure that there are no caveats or risks involved with this plug-in installation.  Are there any reccommendations in this regard?

Thanks in advance for your contributions. 

Thanks in advance.

[Jan Soska]

hello,

please check this great document created by Vmware excelent senior technical marketing architect Cormac Hogan : http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMware-vSphere-Storage-API-Array-Integration.pdf

there is probably said everything.

Jan