FACT SHEET
VMware
®
Support for
FC and FCoE Adapters
Drivers and Utilities for FC and
FCoE SAN Connectivity
Quick Facts
Fibre Channel (FC) natively supported by ESX and •
ESXi
Unified driver model with integrated firmware •
FC topologies: Point-to-Point, FC-AL, FC-AL2, and •
Switched Fabric
Protocols: FCP-3 SCSI, FC-Tape •
Single driver support for 2/4/8Gb FC HBAs and •
10Gb Enhanced Ethernet (10GbEE) FCoE Converged
Network Adapter (CNA)
N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) support for FC •
Adapters
Boot from SAN support •
Support for MSI-X on 4Gb/8Gb FC HBAs and FCoE •
CNAs
Supports all hardware platforms and guest •
operating systems supported by ESX
High Availability
Support for LUN Multipathing Solution •
SCSI Path failover support for Active/Active and •
Active/Passive storage devices
Support for seamless live migration of Virtual •
Machines (VMs) and VM storage using VMotion™
and Storage VMotion™
Manageability
Performance monitoring using VMware Virtual •
Center or VMware
esxtop
tool
Tools to configure and manage QLogic FC HBAs: •
SANsurfer –
®
FC HBA Manager GUI
SANsurfer FC HBA Command Line Interface –
(CLI) for both interactive and scriptable modes
of operation
Integrated management support through VMware •
Infrastructure Client (VI Client) and VirtualCenter
Hardware and Software Support Specifications
Adapters* 10GbEE FCoE CNA: QLE8042 •
8Gb FC: QLE25 •
xx
4Gb FC: QLA24 •
xx
, QLE24
xx
, QMC24
xx,
QME24
xx
, QMH24
xx
2Gb FC: QLA23 •
xx
Server Hardware
Platforms
x86, x64 •
ESX Versions ESX 3.5, ESXi 3.5, ESX 3.0. •
x
, ESX 2.5.
x
Management
Tools
SANsurfer FC HBA Manager (GUI) and CLI •
Integrated HBA management via VMware •
VirtualCenter and VI Client
Fast!
• UTIL BIOS utility for configuring HBA
parameters
Supported
Storage*
EMC •
®
CLARiiON
®
, Symmetrix
®
IBM •
®
TotalStorage
®
DS4000/8000
HP •
®
StorageWorks MSA, EVA, XP
Hitachi •
®
NetApp •
®
Diagnostics Loopback tests •
Read/Write buffer tests •
Link statistics •
Boot Support BIOS •
Boot from SAN •
PCI Form Factors PCIe •
®
, PCI-X
®
, PCI Express
®
Module, Mezzanine
adapters
* For the latest list of supported platforms, guest OSs, storage, and I/O devices, refer to
the respective VMware compatibility guides for your ESX version at www.vmware.com.