Disabling Hardware Accelerated Move (XCOPY) in ESXi

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vSphere ESX 6.x
• VMware vSphere ESX 7.x
• VMware vSphere ESX 8.x

Issue/Introduction

The VAAI feature HardwareAcceleratedMove performs the following array operations:

 

• Clone Blocks/Full Copy/XCOPY, which is used to copy or migrate data within the same physical array

Full copy, also called clone blocks or XCOPY, enables the storage arrays to make full copies of data within the array without having the host HBAs read and write the data. This operation reduces the time and network/SAN load when cloning virtual machines, provisioning from a template, or migrating with Storage vMotion.

 

This article explains how to disable HardwareAcceleratedMove (XCOPY) in ESXi

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.x

 

Resolution

• To disable Hardware Accelerated move a.k.a. use the following ESXCLI command:
   
   
  esxcli system settings advanced set --int-value 0 --option /DataMover/HardwareAcceleratedMove

   

  Note: This option is effective immediately and does not need any reboot or mount/unmount of volumes.
   

• To disable hardware accelerated move using the vSphere Web Client, follow the below procedure :
   
  1. Browse to the host in the vSphere Web Client navigator.
  2. Click the Configure tab.
  3. Under System, click Advanced System Settings.
  4. Change the value for DataMover.HardwareAcceleratedMove to 0 (disabled):
     
      
  Note: This option is effective immediately and does not need any reboot or mount/unmount of volumes.

 

Additional Information

This is a list of commonly used SCSI opcodes related to VAAI operations:

 

0x93	WRITE SAME(16)
0x41	WRITE SAME(10)
0x42	UNMAP
0x89	SCSI COMPARE and WRITE - ATS
0x83	EXTENDED COPY