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.
