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vmwaresucksatre
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Intel X550 10gbe network adapter not showing under storage adapters

Hey so i got some new dell servers, R640. They have 4 10gbe interfaces. Two intel and two broadcom.

I cabled up the intel nics and set them up fine. I added to the virtual switch and gave storage IP addresses to the ports. Until i got the part where i generally set up the storage connection. The adapters do not appear in the list of storage adapters. I can add a virtual iscsi storage adapter, but i can only add one. That does work but seems buggy to me, in that when i go an scan for HBAs the whole esxi host grinds to a halt for hours.

I am thinking this is because the physical adapters are not rendering under storage adapters.

How do i get them to appear in this list? do i have to enable something on the card itself in the firmware?

The other two 10gbe nics (Broadcom BCM57416 NetXtreme-E 10GBASE-T), maybe they will show up under storage adapters when they are cabled up? does the cable status effect when cards show up under storage adapters or do i have to do something else to make them show up there? in my memory they were always just there.

ESXi release is 6.7.0 15160138 provided by dell EMC.

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vmwaresucksatre
Contributor
Contributor

From this link

VMware Compatibility Guide - I/O Device Search

It certainly does appear that neither the intel x550 or the Broadcom 57416 supports iscsi in vmware 6.7 u3.

While an adapter on my old server, a QLogic 57800, does appear to have iscsi support. (device type iSCSI returns results)

So was the wrong part ordered here? Will it still work as software iscsi? or do i need to order a new network card of somesort. I did not order these servers and probably the person who did assumed that all 10gbe cards would support iscsi.

Even intel does say that iscsi is supported on the x550. is it just vmware that doesnt support it?

Intel® Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X550 Product Brief

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IRIX201110141
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You have up to 3 options (Depending on the HW)

  • swISCSI
  • dependent HBA
  • Independet HBA (Last seen as 1G Qlogic...)

If your NIC is "just" a nic than you always can use swISCSI and this is what we use since 2008 when we start with Open-E iSCSI SAN and later switch to EQL, NetApp, HPE and all the others.

Regards,
Joerg

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