Using Fibre Channel HBA (QLE2564) instead of 10GB NICs for VSAN networking

[ZenWare]

Hi all,

I was just curious as whether I could use my Fibre HBA cards; primarily to be used in a SAN setup with OS Nexus

for netorking instead of the requirements of 1Gb / 10Gb/s NICS.

Thanks

[zdickinson]

Good morning, I think the question is can you do Ethernet/Multicast over Fibre and is that a supported config from VMware.  I think answers are probably and no.  Thank you, Zach.

[Bill_Oyler]

No.  The QLE2564 is a Native Fibre Channel (FC) only HBA.  VSAN uses Ethernet as the Layer 2 transport and IP as the Layer 3 transport.  For VSAN communication, you must use an Ethernet-capable NIC (typically 10 GbE or faster, although certain configurations support 1 GbE).