Hardware Acceleration Requirements

The hardware acceleration functionality works only if you use an appropriate host and storage array combination.

Table 1. Hardware Acceleration Storage Requirements

ESXi	Block Storage Devices	NAS Devices
ESXi	Support T10 SCSI standard, or block storage plug-ins for array integration (VAAI)	Support NAS plug-ins for array integration

Note: If your SAN or NAS storage fabric uses an intermediate appliance in front of a storage system that supports hardware acceleration, the intermediate appliance must also support hardware acceleration and be properly certified. The intermediate appliance might be a storage virtualization appliance, I/O acceleration appliance, encryption appliance, and so on.