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TAE
Contributor
Contributor

Is it possible to disable iSCSI adapter in ESXi?

Forgive the "why one Earth would you want to do that" question, but is it possible to prevent/disable the loading of iSCSI storage adapters in ESXi 4.1?

In ESX 4.0 U1, the only iSCSI adapter that is loaded is the software adapter. However, upon installing ESXi 4.1 to the very same server, there's now a Broadcom iSCSI Adapter listed (one for each imbedded Broadcom NIC in my Dell R710). I've searched the web, config files, and advanced settings, all to no avail. Given the lack of information on this, I'm guess the answer is a big, fat "NOPE.

Thanks in advance for everyone's time.

-Todd

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Josh26
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hi,

Would it be the answer you were looking for to configure the vmKernernel you are using to use the correct adapter only? This would have the same effect. The binding process is discussed here:

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/09/a-multivendor-post-on-using-iscsi-with-vmware-vs...

See step 3.

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Silverchenau
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I'm not exact sure the detail step. But I believe you can always edit the esxcon.cfg and rem the loading script of that particular iSCSI adapter.

In this case, your ESXi should not load driver correctly.






- Silver

My Vmware blog: http://geeksilverblog.com

- Silver My Vmware blog: http://geeksilverblog.com
AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

The new 4.1 version has a support for the TOE function of some Ethernet card.

If you use this interface you can off-load some operations compared to the full software initiator.

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
TAE
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the responses, guys.

I suppose I should have provided some background in this as I'm not really looking to get iSCSI working. The reason behind this effort is because I'm trying to figure out why I'm getting such a long boot-up time for ESXi for hosts that have visibility to the SAN (have storage provisioned) and this is one aspect that I noticed was different from ESX 4.0. My thought was that since this is new, and ultimately being used by the OS (hypervisor), there would be resources in use that would be "spinning away", causing the delay. But I suppose that if I have no iSCSI connections configured, nothing is really being used, is it?

Silver - where is this .cfg file located? (Don't worry, I assume all responsibility if I mess with this file, etc. etc. etc.)

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Silverchenau
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

hi, TAE:

Remember you can modify that esx.conf (/etc/vmware/esx.conf) and to increase queue length for your hba card? If you configured the wrong parameter, you are not going to see any share storages. so I reckon you do can use esx.conf to disable the hba or hardware iSCSI card as long as you know what to do.






- Silver

My Vmware blog: http://geeksilverblog.com

- Silver My Vmware blog: http://geeksilverblog.com
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