ESX 5.1 with 4.1 fnic driver

[dylan.ebner]

I am in the middle of deploying serveral UCS chassis and servers that will run ESX 5.1. Our McData (brocade) switches are no longer supported by cisco and subsequently will not work with ESX 5.0 or higher. ESX 4.1 does work though. Has anyone had any success in slipping in the fnic driver from 4.1 into a 5.1 installation? Or am I chasing a pipe dream? I could use ESX 4.1 until we get new fabric switches, but then we couldn't migrate existing hosts onto new servers as their VM version is not compatable.

Thanks

[Manuel Velasco]

Hi Dylan,

Unfortunately this won’t work even if you are able to load the 4.1 drivers on the newer version. You will probably see many problems including performance or disconnections of the host.

[dylan.ebner]

That is what I was afraid of. It looks like the the old offline bundles don't have the xml file so I can't even get PowerCLI to recognize the driver to build a custom ISO.

[Manuel Velasco]

What is the storage type that you have?

What firmware do you have installed?

Do you know that in UCS firwmware 2.1 you can configure internal zonning and have a direct attached storega array connected to your fabrics?

Configuring Fibre Channel Zoning

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/gui/config/guide/2.1/b_UCSM_GUI_Configuration_Guide_2_1_chapter_011011.html

[dylan.ebner]

Our arrays are EMC CX3-40s. We are using Mcdata 4700s with the latest firmware. And our UCS platform is using 2.1. We also have Nexus 5Ks with storage licenses as well. We have gone through many scenarios with Cisco:

1. Connecting the McData's to the Nexus 5ks via ISL is not working properly / supported.

2: Using NPV on the 5K's is not desierable because it disables the ability to use storage ports on the 5Ks (we should have new arrays in the next 6 months)

3: Connecting the Arrays directly to the 5Ks or the UCS chassis disconnects our arrays from our existing vm and non-vm hosts

Our last hope was to connect the the UCS FICs to the McData's and use NPIV to provision the servers.