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Storage virtualization with VMware and Microsoft copy offload overview

Contributors netapp-dbagwell netapp-aherbin
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VMware and Microsoft support copy offload operations to increase performance and network throughput. You must configure your system to meet the requirements of the VMware and Windows operating system environments to use their respective copy offload functions.

When using VMware and Microsoft copy offload in virtualized environments, your LUNs must be aligned. Unaligned LUNs can degrade performance.

Advantages of using a virtualized SAN environment

Creating a virtualized environment by using storage virtual machines (SVMs) and LIFs enables you to expand your SAN environment to all of the nodes in your cluster.

  • Distributed management

    You can log in to any node in the SVM to administer all of the nodes in a cluster.

  • Increased data access

    With MPIO and ALUA, you have access to your data through any active iSCSI or FC LIFs for the SVM.

  • Controlled LUN access

    If you use SLM and portsets, you can limit which LIFs an initiator can use to access LUNs.