ESXi FibreChannel Woes

Question

I just recently got VMWare ESXi installed on one of our servers. I installed some fibre channel cards (QLogic) and for some unknown reason they show up in the storage adapters tab as an ISCSi Adapters. However, this does create some issues as I can only use WWN targets with my SAN. I have installed the drivers for the QLogic manually through WinSCP and Putty. The SAN we are trying to use is a EMC VNX 5300, 4 Fibre Channel Cards connected to a Fabric Switch.

ISCSi Adapters

Has anybody experienced this or has any ideas?

What is the exact version number of the Qlogic cards? How are you certain that they are in fact FiberChannel cards and not iSCSI cards? Because the most probable reason for them being identified as iSCSI adapters is that . . . that's what they are. — Law29, May 01 '16 at 19:40
Iscsi is a protocol, not an adapter. HBA, WWN and the SAN itself should be enough to tell you it's FC — Sum1sAdmin, May 01 '16 at 19:48
Well it Does help actually looking at these things.... It is a bnx2i QLogic NetXTreme II iSCSI Adapter +1 Law29 So what do i set the iSCSI name and alias to in Vmware or Do i leave it as is and try to target it as is from our SAN — TacticalKitchen, May 01 '16 at 20:25

Law29 · Answer 1 · 2016-05-01T22:29:29.783

According to QLogic NetXtremeII presentation and data sheet the named cards support Ethernet, iSCSI, and FCoE. That does not include plain FC, unfortunately. FC as a whole is a different low-level protocol than Ethernet. FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) replaces layers FC0 and FC1 of the FC specification with Ethernet while retaining layers FC2 - FC3 - FC4. Cards that can do both FC and Ethernet are very rare, and it does not seem that yours are of that number.

You have plain FC between your VNX and your fabric switch, so you may be able to bridge that to FCoE, either on your fabric switch (you didn't specify its make, but it may have or you may be able to add interfaces that are FCoE or can be configured as FCoE), or with some additional equipment. Otherwise, you need FC cards, not FCoE cards.

Your VNX 5300 should also be able to run FCoE. I don't know if you need extra cards in your VNX for that, or maybe software licenses, but if you don't that'll very probably be the cheapest option.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 01 '16 at 20:29

0

This is a BIOS and configuration issue.

Go into the BIOS of the controller and select the personality of the card. It's probably configurable between Fibre Channel and iSCSI.

That is all.

answered May 01 '16 at 20:29

ewwhite

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I will post results – TacticalKitchen May 01 '16 at 20:44
What kind of setting am I looking for? Apologies, I actually am quit new to the whole storage side of things – TacticalKitchen May 01 '16 at 20:58
It's self-explanatory. Please look at the BIOS settings for the QLogic adapter. – ewwhite May 01 '16 at 21:03
_*probably*_ being the operative word... – Law29 May 01 '16 at 21:04
I have these adapters in some of my HP ProLiant servers. It's a configuration setting because it's a Converged Network adapter. – ewwhite May 01 '16 at 21:07
But usually "Converged" means "having done away with the shadow FC network and put it on FcoE instead". – Law29 May 01 '16 at 22:21
Oh, then the OP simply has the wrong equipment for this application. – ewwhite May 01 '16 at 22:22

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered May 03 '16 at 22:40

"I have these adapters in some of my HP ProLiant servers. It's a configuration setting because it's a Converged Network adapter. – ewwhite 2 days ago "

Got me on the right track.

after many many days I found a vib package for the brocade cards.

Turns out what was listed a a qlogic adapter turned out to be an internal NIC what was listed as a brocade device turned out to be an HP 8GB FC adapter.

TL;DR: Driver related fun

ESXi FibreChannel Woes

3 Answers3