FC storage adapter disappears in ESX 6.0 and 6.5

[cheese2]

For my vSphere cluster I have a set of HPE bl460c blades each with the FlexFabric 536flb adapter in the LOM slot which does double duty as both network adapter and FC adapter via FCoE.  This has worked well since I set it up last year.  However recently I've had to rebuild one of the blades from scratch.  Initially I tried this with ESX 6.5, but after running into problems I reverted to the latest release of 6.0 and have found no difference between them.  The problem is that the adapter is no longer recognized as a storage adapter.  The network side of it functions fine but as a storage adapter it simply doesn't exist and I'm left with no access to my SAN.  Running 'esxcli fcoe adapter list' returns nothing.  Running 'esxcli system module list' the fcoe module is not listed.

It sounds very much like the problem described in this blog post:

http://tomaskalabis.com/wordpress/vmware-esxi-broadcom-bcm75840-and-software-fcoe/

and this Dell support article:

Dell Server: Qlogic 578xx FCoE Storage Adapter Disappears From VMware Client Configuration Tab Follo...

And I note that the HPE 536flb uses the same chipset and OEM driver as the Dell adapter, however the fix in these articles - setting the autodiscover parameter to 1 - doesn't seem to work.  The other solution in the Dell article, reverting to an older driver, does succeed in getting it to show up as a storage adapter again, however it's stuck Offline. The bnx2fc module refuses to load with the error 'bad parameter'.

Has anyone else experienced this?  How do I get access to my storage back?  (and why hasn't this affected any of the other hosts which are all fully patched and updated to the same version I built this one with?)   Thanks.

[dja234]

have you installed esx using hp custom image?

[cheese2]

Yes both 6.5 and 6.0 were installed using the latest HPE image, however the driver package on it looks to be the same one provided by VMware so I'm not sure it makes any difference in this case.

[cheese2]

Just a little update on this - Being blades the FCoE connectivity through the chassis is managed with OneView.  I have discovered that when the driver is manually downgraded so that the vmhbas do show up as storage adapters, the WWNs of the vmhbas as displayed in the web client do not match the server initiator WWNs displayed in OneView.  On the other hosts where it works properly they match.  This is probably why they are stuck offline and can't see any storage.  No amount of fiddling with the OneView server profile can get them to match up.

I have now reinstalled ESX on the host several times and the last version of the HPE image where it works properly is VMware-ESXi-6.0.0-Update2-3620759-HPE-600.9.5.0.48-Apr2016.iso  Anything newer than that and it's not recognized as a storage adapter.

[tsukraw1]

We are currently facing the same issue.

We have 2 BL460c blades that we cannot get to show the FCoE Storage Adapters.

One of the blades was working, we ran the latest SPP 201704 and since then it stopped. That was on ESXI 6.0

We have since tried reloading the ESXI OS and still no go.

The second blade that is experiencing the issue was brand new, out of the box we ran the SPP 201704.

And have not been able to get FCoE to show up.

The only common element between the two are both had SPP 201704 ran on them.  (We were doing the upgrade/install at the exact same time that is why both had it ran)

On your blades experiencing the issues did you run the 201704 SPP by chance?

[admin]

You could try the following:

esxcli fcoe nic list

That will return the vmnics that can support FCoE. Use those vmnics in the following commands, e.g.:

esxcli fcoe nic discover -n vmnic2

esxcli fcoe nic discover -n vmnic3

That should hopefully force ESXi to discover the FCoE adapters.

[cheese2]

No I have kept these on the 201610 SPP for fear of introducing further problems.  Sound like that was a good idea.

My best suggestion would be to force downgrade your blades to the 201610SPP and reinstall ESX using an image no newer than April 2016.  You can then patch it with update manager, avoiding any updates to the bnx2fc driver package.  That's the best I have been able to come up with.

[cheese2]

I did try that before I downgraded the driver and it made no difference.  Didn't try it with the downgraded driver in place, and now I've reverted to an older install that works so I can't test it now.  Worth trying if anyone else is stuck with visible but offline vmhbas like I was.

[proBES]

Had the same problem, latest HPE U3 Image

VMware Knowledge Base  pointed me in the right direction.

After adding FCoE HBA connections in VC Module the Adapter shows up again as FCoE device.

Cant explain, how these settings have changed, but can´t be the recent firmware upgrade to SPP201704 as mentioned below, as we did this many times before without issues.

Hope, this helps.

[Richie55]

Thanks this fixed the issue for me.

I have HPE FlexFabric 10Gb 2P 536FLB FIO  and the HPE VMware v6.0U3 iso and no storage Adapters.

Ran the 2 discover commands  and issue is fixed.

Thanks.

[askfos]

I've tried to compare software driver between two servers but they are the same version. But two command below help me to figure out the FC storage adapter issue for qlogic 57810. Thanks a lot for this useful command.

esxcli fcoe nic discover -n vmnic2

esxcli fcoe nic discover -n vmnic3