vSphere Storage - ESXi 5.1 - Documentation - VMware

Configuring Fibre Channel over 5
Ethernet
To access Fibre Channel storage, an ESXi host can use the Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol.
The FCoE protocol encapsulates Fibre Channel frames into Ethernet frames. As a result, your host does not
need special Fibre Channel links to connect to Fibre Channel storage, but can use 10Gbit lossless Ethernet to
deliver Fibre Channel traffic.
This chapter includes the following topics:
n “Fibre Channel over Ethernet Adapters,” on page 45
n “Configuration Guidelines for Software FCoE,” on page 46
n “Set Up Networking for Software FCoE,” on page 46
n “Set Up Networking for Software FCoE in the vSphere Web Client,” on page 47
n “Add Software FCoE Adapters,” on page 48
n “Add Software FCoE Adapters in the vSphere Web Client,” on page 48
Fibre Channel over Ethernet Adapters
To use Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), you need to install FCoE adapters on your host.
The adapters that VMware supports generally fall into two categories, hardware FCoE adapters and software
FCoE adapters that use the native FCoE stack in ESXi.
Hardware FCoE Adapters
This category includes completely offloaded specialized Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) that contain
network and Fibre Channel functionalities on the same card.
When such adapter is installed, your host detects and can use both CNA components. In the client, the
networking component appears as a standard network adapter (vmnic) and the Fibre Channel component as
a FCoE adapter (vmhba). You do not need to configure the hardware FCoE adapter to be able to use it.
Software FCoE Adapters
A software FCoE adapter uses the native FCoE protocol stack in ESXi for the protocol processing. The software
FCoE adapter is used with a NIC that offers Data Center Bridging (DCB) and I/O offload capabilities. Intel
X520 is an example of such NIC. For information on NICs supporting software FCoE, see the vSphere
Compatibility Guide.
VMware, Inc. 45