VAAI driver download link for XIV

Hi Team!

Back from a short break (for Easter and the School Holidays) to three great pieces of news:

1. A new series of Doctor Who is screening.
2. Will and Kates wedding went off without a hitch (its not often I get to yell at the dog to stop barking at possums because there is a Royal Wedding on).
3. The VAAI driver for XIV has an official download link.

Ok… maybe the Royal Wedding has no place in my blog, but the VAAI link is very appreciated.

Two ways to get to the driver:

1. Get it directly from here
2. Go to fix Central and select it from the download list:   http://www-933.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/

Remember, your XIV needs to be on 10.2.4a firmware, so you need to be talking to your IBM Service Representative to schedule a concurrent firmware update before you turn the VAAI functions on.

Now if your going, um… what is VAAI and how does it help?   Check this blog post out:

https://aussiestorageblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/my-first-experience-with-xiv-and-vaai/

If your asking, hey what else will 10.2.4a code bring me?

• How about better write performance?
• How about QoS?
• 10.2.4a code also brings the ability to do ‘truck’ initialization of an async pair (which lets you pre-load an async secondary for faster initial mirroring, or to convert from sync to async without re-mirroring all your data).
• It also lets you format a snapshot, which means you can keep a snapshot in place and mapped to a host, but it will not consume any space.