ESXi 7.0 Supported device not actually supported?

[agbiront]

Hi.

I've been upgrading the hardware of my home lab to support vSphere 7.0, and also the migration to 10GbE was long overdue 😛

Ended up swapping some Intel 82575 quad port NICs for dual 10GbE based on BCM57810s (old, cheap, but it gets the job done).

I have 3 ESXi hosts, two of them have QLE2462 adapters and the other one has QLE2562. The last one is working just fine, but I cannot upgrade the hosts with the 4Gbps FC adapters. I know they are very old and obsolete, but it's what I have at the moment and for my home lab is enough.

The problem is that these devices are supposed to be supported:

The device ID is: 1077:2432:1077:0138

But when I try to upgrade it won't let me:

I reinstalled a host manually, from scratch, and the QLogic adapter is not showing up. Updated the drivers, then the firmware, but it still doesn't work. The latest firmware from QLogic site is 8.01.02, there is no mention of a 9.04.x firmware, not even for the QLE2562 based adapter that I have working fine with 8.08.xx firmware.

What am I missing? The exact VID:DID:SVID:SSID code shows up as supported...

[MichaelKauffman]

Hello,

I have the same problem after upgrading from 6.5 to just 6.7.

My hosts, PowerEdge R430,
have both ISP2432
and QLE2562 (DeviceID 2532) (probably added later).
2532 work fine, 2432 don't.

When investigating, I find some discrepancies in the compatibilty listings:

https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?deviceCategory=io&productid=34560&deviceCa...
says 6.7U3 and 2432 are compatible, with driver qlnativefc 3.1.16 .
(However, this list seems suspect, since it lists even ESXi6.7 with drivers 1.1, which belong to ESXi5.5.)

But the driver download
https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/downloads/details?downloadGroup=DT-ESXI67-QLOGIC-QLNATIVEFC-31160-1...
lists compatibility beginning from 2500.

I have 3.1.46 from the DellEMC customized ISO,
but the device lists in the description on every download page for 3.1.8 and 3.1.46 and all other 3.1.* start with 2500,
whereas the changelog included in the downloads starts stating 2400 and doesn't indicate any compatibility change.

(I'm surprised to read that 2432 are very old and obsolete, since we bought the hosts just 3 years ago.)

[MichaelKauffman]

Notably, for the newer ones, there is also a firmware package:
https://www.dell.com/support/home/de-de/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=j5y1y&oscode=xi67&productcod...

This is in contrast to the user guide from 2300, which says that the adapter's flash memory contains just some boot code, while the functional firmware is included in the driver and uploaded into the adapter on every boot.

So has the design changed so much?
Is 2500 in fact a completely different device than 2400, after the company change?
Is a different, additional driver necessary?

https://driverdownloads.qlogic.com/ doesn't list 2430 at all.