Tintri VMstore and SMB Copy Offload (ODX)

With SMB 3.0, Microsoft included support for Copy Offload, or ODX.

When an SMB client, such as Hyper-V, wishes to copy a file from an SMB share to an SMB share, it traditionally had to read the whole file from the SMB share only to then write it back to the destination file on the same SMB share. This is typically what happens to the virtual disks in your VMs when you provision them from templates and it can take quite a considerable amount of time.

SCVMM and Hyper-V, in conjunction with Tintri VMstore’s SMB 3.0 implementation, can make use of ODX to have the copy performed by the storage and not by copying the data over the network. In the case of Tintri VMstore, this copy is performed using the same Tintri magic that our snapshot and clone technology are built on. The end result is a complete copy of the virtual disk in a handful of seconds instead of minutes or perhaps hours.

None of this requires special plugins or modules in Hyper-V or SCVMM. Simply create an SMB share on VMstore and assign that to your SCVMM library server to store your templates. Any VM deployed to VMstore from one of those templates on the VMstore library share will be deployed using ODX.

You can see that ODX is being used by watching the SCVMM Jobs window when deploying the VM. It should show that Fast File Copy is being used, which indicates ODX. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss it.

If you’re not using SCVMM, simply store your golden virtual disk images on VMstore and deploy VMs to VMstore by making copies of those images in the usual fashion.
Got better things to do than watch a progress bar for an hour when deploying a VM? Store your templates on VMstore and let ODX take care of it in seconds.