After sharing my recent Synology DS723+ setup for my Homelab, where I initially decided on using iSCSI storage since it had out of the box support for VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), I had received a number of comments and recommendations to actually stay away from iSCSI and just use NFS due to the various inconsistent and performance issues that other users have observed with the Synology.
The only reason I opted for iSCSI was purely for its VAAI support, I certainly would have preferred to use NFS for its simplicity of setup and management. Timing could not have been better as I recently came to learn on the VMware Reddit channel, u/MrGimper had shared an update that they were successful in installing and consuming the latest version of the Synology NFS VAAI Plug-In (2.0-1109) on an ESXi 8.0 system, even though vSphere 7.0 was the highest supported version from Synology.
Disclaimer: Synology does not officially support vSphere 8.0, please use at your own risk. I did hear back from Synology and their current stance on support for vSphere 8.0 with their NFS VAAI Plug-In is that "They do not know when the next version will be supported".
I had considered installing the latest Synology VAAI plug-in but I figured since vSphere 8.0 was not listed as supported, that it probably would not install but this actually gave me some hope, so I decided to try this out on my vSphere 8.0 Update 1 setup.
You can download the latest version of the Synology VAAI plug-in from HERE, which includes the instructions for installing using ESXCLI or you could also deploy using vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM).
After rebooting my ESXi host, I created a new shared volume on the Synology using File Station and then connected to the NFS v3 datastore, where I was able to take advantage of the new NFS VMkernel binding feature that was introduced in vSphere 8.0 Update 1.
Using ESXCLI or the vSphere UI, we can now see that our NFS datastore from the Synology is now showing hardware acceleration is enabled!
I can also confirm that the performance with NFS was definitely more consistent than using iSCSI, especially while doing a few bulk Storage vMotion to and from the Synology as a quick test.
Since VAAI is now functional with NFS on the Synology, I have decided to remove my iSCSI setup just for ease of configuration and management.
Sadly this seems to be broken again in the ESXi 8.0.2 update. The previous errors have returned and this cannot be installed 🙁
OK I've done some more digging.... it appears it still works on hosts that originated as fresh installs of ESXi 8. But if you try to upgrade ESXi 7 to 8 with the plugin installed it will complain that you must uninstall it. Once you uninstall the plugin and upgrade to ESXi 8 (any version/update), you cannot then reinstall the plugin!
Maybe you can throw some light on a reason William?
OK something odd is happening. My above comment was based on a free install of ESXi 8.0.2 within a test VM (Fusion 13). I have now performed fresh installs of ESXi 8.0.2 and 8.0.1a on physical hardware (HP EliteDesk 800 DM), and VAAI failed to install on both fresh installs. I will now try 8.0.1 and see if that works..... will report back.
@MrGimper - Did you get around to testing this a bit more? I just ran into this issue as well and work love to keep using VAAI.
Update Synology updated their help guide and I was able to get this working via command line. I am still a little fuzzy on adding it to LCM.
I would love to know how to get the VIB injected into vCenter and LCM. Doesn't seem possible at the moment. Maybe its time to abandon ESXi and go to something new anyway due to Broadcom nuking the company.