ESXi 6.7 + Synology NFS VAAI Plug-in

A quick google search for Synology NFS VAAI will get some decent results but the step by step documentation could use some TLC. Especially for 6.7 hosts where even after adding the .zip package manually to update manager it will list 6.7 hosts as compliant without performing any remediation tasks.

  1. Place ESXi host into maintenance mode
  2. ssh into ESXi host
  3. View status of current NFS datastores
    1. esxcli storage nfs list
    2. esxcli storage nfs41 list
  4. Enable and verify httpClient firewall rule
    1. if rule is not enabled wget returns “Error wget: error getting response: Cannot assign requested address”
    2. esxcli network firewall ruleset set --enabled=true --ruleset-id=httpClient
    3. esxcli network firewall ruleset list | grep -E '^Name|^---|http'
  5. Create a folder to hold the VIB and download
    1. cd /vmfs/volumes/<targetVolume>
    2. mkdir _vib && cd _vib
    3. if [ -f ./synology-nfs-vaai-plugin-1.2-1008.vib ]; then echo "synology vib exists"; else echo "download synology vib"; wget https://global.download.synology.com/download/Tools/NFSVAAIPlugin/1.2-1008/VMware_ESXi/synology-nfs-vaai-plugin-1.2-1008.vib; fi
  6. Install the module
    1. esxcli software vib install -v $(pwd)/synology-nfs-vaai-plugin-1.2-1008.vib --no-sig-check
  7. Disable and verify httpClient firewall rule
    1. esxcli network firewall ruleset set --enabled=false --ruleset-id=httpClient
    2. esxcli network firewall ruleset list | grep -E '^Name|^---|http'
  8. Reboot the host
    1. esxcli system shutdown reboot --delay=5 --reason=synology-nfs-vaai-plugin-1.2-1008
  9. ssh back into the ESXi host and verify the new VIB is installed
    1. esxcli software vib list | grep -E '^Name|^---|synology'
  10. Verify Hardware Acceleration status is “Supported”
    1. esxcli storage nfs list
    2. esxcli storage nfs41 list
  11. Disable maintenance mode
    1. esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable=false

Note: even though NFS v4 was enabled on the Synology RS815 [DSM 6.2.2-24922 Update 4] the ESXi 6.7 hosts could not add the datastore unless I selected NFS v3. Tailing vmkernel.log claimed my RS815 did not support NFS v4.1