I have 4 Dell M620's with Broadcom FCOE adapters that I'm moving to a chassis with the Cisco FEX module. The Broadcom adapters require the ESXI Software FCOE to be configured. The ESXI documentation says to create vmkernel ports on a vswitch with the adapters that support FCOE. I did not do that but yet my FCOE seems to be working because it was zoned and I see my storage. Do I need to create them? Also which adapter should the vmkernel ports be on, the physical nic or the broadcom virtual adapters?
Here is my setup:
1 vswitch with VMkernel for management, vmkernel for vmotion, several port groups, and vmnic0 and vmnic1 teamed with etherchannel.
vmnic2 and vmnic3 are the virtual FCOE adapters. VLAN10 and VLAN20 are for FCOE Both vmnic2 and vmnic3 see the storage like they should.
Should I create a vswitch for these with vmkernel ports? I'm not sure why they should be created when I can see my storage now. Is the management vmkernel enabling the software FCOE to see the storage? My concern is that if the managment vmkernel is enabling the FCOE software adapters to see storage, there may be connectivity issues since it is etherchanneled. I know with iSCSI you can't etherchannel the iSCSI vkernel adapters so I wasn't sure about FCOE vmernel adapters.
