Disable/Enable Fiber card from a remote ESX host

[chukarma]

Hello all,

I have a remote cluster that is running 4 ESX 4.0 hosts. Is there a way to check the status, disable/enable the fiber card from the host via VC or command line? I tried looking at the options for esxcfg-scsidevs but wasn't able to see any status or disable/enable option. Thanks in advance for any help.

Daniel

[arturka]

Hi Daniel,

Could you put little bit more info, what are you want to do it ? Do you wanna Disabl\Enable manualy FC on ESX host or just check if cards are working or not ?

There is a command esxcfg-mpath -l |grep -i disk in output you can see how many path to storage you have and you can see if FC is working or not.

if this answer is useful for you click some stars please

Artur

[chukarma]

Thank you Artur for the reply. What I want is pretty basic. I just need to know if status of the FC. Like for the physical nics status, we can use the command esxcfg-nics -l to list the network cards and their status (up or down). I was wondering if there's something similar to that where I can determine the status of the FC.

Thanks,

Daniel

[Wimo]

The esxcfg-mpath command already suggested should tell you what you need, but another thing you can do is go to /proc/scsi. There you should see a directory starting with either qla or lpfc depending on your choice of vendor. In that directory there should be 2 files the names of which are numbers. more or cat those files and there should be a line saying "Link Up" if indeed it is up.

[chukarma]

Thanks,

I did check that file but wasn't able to find any indication of the card being up or down. Am I misreading something?

QLogic PCI to Fibre Channel Host Adapter for QLE2462:

Firmware version 4.04.09 , Driver version 8.02.01-k1-vmw39

BIOS version 2.02

FCODE version 2.00

EFI version 2.00

Flash FW version 4.03.01

ISP: ISP2432

Request Queue = 0x7c013000, Response Queue = 0x7c094000

Request Queue count = 4096, Response Queue count = 512

Total number of interrupts = 2663915

Device queue depth = 0x10

Number of free request entries = 2367

Number of mailbox timeouts = 0

Number of ISP aborts = 0

Number of loop resyncs = 1

Host adapter:loop state = , flags = 0x145ac3

Dpc flags = 0x0

MBX flags = 0x0

Link down Timeout = 045

Port down retry = 005

Login retry count = 008

Execution throttle = 2048

ZIO mode = 0x6, ZIO timer = 1

Commands retried with dropped frame(s) = 0

Product ID = 0000 0000 0000 0000

NPIV Supported : Yes

Max Virtual Ports = 127

SCSI Device Information:

scsi-qla0-adapter-node=2000001b3282fb97:ee0100:0;

scsi-qla0-adapter-port=2100001b3282fb97:ee0100:0;

FC Target-Port List:

scsi-qla0-target-0=50060e80104ef752;

scsi-qla0-target-1=50060e80104ef750;

FC Port Information:

scsi-qla0-port-0=50060e80104ef752:50060e80104ef752:ee0000:81;

scsi-qla0-port-1=50060e80104ef750:50060e80104ef750:ee0001:82;

[arturka]

I coudn't find info about FC state on my ESXHost with QLogic FC cards, but you can identified if your FC card is physically connected to switch or not

FROM CONNECTED FC CARD

Loop down time = 120

Loop down abort time = 090

Commands retried with dropped frame(s) = 9

Configured data rate: 4 Gb/sec

NPIV Supported : Yes

Max Virtual Ports = 127

SCSI Device Information:

scsi-qla1-adapter-node=2000001b328959be;

scsi-qla1-adapter-port=2100001b328959be;

FC Port Information:

scsi-qla1-port-0=50050768010041e0:50050768011041e0:617b13:81;

scsi-qla1-port-1=5005076801004613:5005076801104613:616b13:82;

scsi-qla1-port-2=5005076801004aa3:5005076801104aa3:628713:1;

scsi-qla1-port-3=5005076801004b05:5005076801104b05:629b13:2;

FROM NOT CONNECTED CARD

Link down Timeout = 030

Port down retry = 015

Login retry count = 015

Loop down time = 120

Loop down abort time = 090

Commands retried with dropped frame(s) = 0

Configured data rate: unknown

NPIV Supported : Yes

Max Virtual Ports = 127

SCSI Device Information:

scsi-qla0-adapter-node=2000001b321e68a7;

scsi-qla0-adapter-port=2100001b321e68a7;

FC Port Information:

NO INFO

Check parts on BOLD

Artur

P.S. if it was useful click some stars, please

[chukarma]

Strange,

My Qlogic card doesn't show the rate like yours did. I gave you a couple of stars for your help, did you not see them?

[swiftangelus · Accepted solution]

As it is a QLogic card you can download the command line utility and install it into the ESX console. once installed jujst run "iscli" and you will see a menu with various options. You can check status, upgrade BIOS and change BIOS settings from there.

Depending on the model may depend on the download you need, but look for SANSurfer iscli in the download list for your adapter on the QLogic web site.

[chukarma]

Thanks, I loaded the SANsurfer and have much more control now