Microsoft Failover Clusters with Shared Disks: FCOE vs. FC Support?

[aaronwsmith]

Hello Everyone,

From reviewing the following KB, I know that VMware is providing limited support for FCOE when virtualizing Microsoft Failover Clusters with shared disks:

VMware KB: Microsoft Clustering on VMware vSphere: Guidelines for Supported Configurations

In our case, our servers are HP blades (e.g. BL460c Gen8) with FlexFabric adapters installed in C7000 enclosures with Virtual Connect (VC) devices providing the SAN and Network connectivity.  The VC devices are requiring us to configure HBAs as FCOE devices for the blade servers.  However, the physical connection from the VCs to the SAN switches are FC cabling.

Does anyone know if this is technically supported by VMware?  Is anyone running a similar setup with virtual FCOE adapters and having success/issues?

Thanks much!

[VirtuallyMikeB]

Cisco UCS runs FCoE from the Chassis to its Fabric Interconnects and is supported.  I imagine HP is the same.

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Mike Brown

VMware, Cisco Data Center, and NetApp dude

Consulting Engineer

michael.b.brown3@gmail.com

Twitter: @VirtuallyMikeB

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[Nick_Andreev]

Yes, as VirtuallyMikeB‌ said FC frames are transferred from the blade CNA adapters to the VirtualConnect module encapsulated in Ethernet frames. Then FC frames get decoupled within the VC and forwarded further to your storage array over FC.

In the host Storage Adapters section you will see HBAs as Fibre Channel over Ethernet devices.