Technote (troubleshooting)
Problem(Abstract)
With the release of vSphere 5, VMWare stopped using plugins that sent the xcopy commands to the storage controller and started to use integrated SCSI commands. Subsequent testing performed by the XIV team indicates that when copying between datastores the xcopy function does not provide the intended performance benefits, as the copy operations reverted to regular copy operations performed by the VMWare system.
If a customer has vSphere 5 (General Availability August 2011) and runs xcopy commands against an XIV storage array, the command will not fail but the client will not benefit from the performance features. IBM is aware of this issue and is working on a fix.
Symptom
When coping between two datastore, the xcopy function does not provide the performance benefits.
Environment
The affected environments are:
vSphere 5 with XIV microcode versions 10.2.4 , 10.2.4.a, 10.2.4.b, 10.2.4.c
vSphere 5 with XIV microcode versions 11.0.0, 11.0.0.a
Resolving the problem
Workaround
Keep the source and the target of the xcopy command in the same datastore.
Fix
For the affected versions 10.2.4 , 10.2.4.a, 10.2.4.b, 10.2.4.c, this issue is planned to be resolved in a future maintenance release 10.2.4.e that is expected to be released in 2012 Q1.
For the affected versions 11.0.0, 11.0.0.a this issue is resolved in release 11.0.1, the certification process is underway.
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