vSphere vNetwork

Is there any support in ESX 4 for the use of a 10 GB iSCSI full hardware initiator instead of the software initiator? On the VMWare HCL I only see 10GB NIC and 1GB iSCSI adapters....i don't see any 10GB iSCSI adapters. I assume that means we can use the software initiator but hardware is not supported, correct?

HP and IBM will release the10Gbps H/W iSCSI initiator expecially with blade servers. We expect the same in near future.

regards

manic

manic, will these be HBAs like the QLogic or NICs with iSCSI offload?

Please reffer the following link

http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_iSCSI_UCNA_First_Look_2009-12-18.html

I belive all the storage component vendors are concentrating on converged Network Adopter which supports FCoE,exspecially Qlogic amd Emulex.

CNA supports 2x 10Gbps ethernet + 2x 4GBps FC HBA's

regards

manic

please reffer the following I hope this will answer your question

http://www.chelsio.com/assetlibrary/products/S310E%20Product%20Brief%20090630.pdf

and it is also in vmware HCL list, The two adopters will offload iscsi traffic

Does that adapter use the software iSCSI initiator or a hardware initiator?

as of now it is working with software initiator but it has TCP offload accellerator increases performance. H/W initiators are in road map.

in storage part HP Left hand SAN sells with 10 GBps iSCSI target

NetApp will release with FAS6030C

regards

Manic

Any idea on time frame for the 10GB cards with hardware initiators built in...this year, Q2 Q3 or Q4...next year?

Since already 10 Gbps iSCSI storage boxes released, We may expect by this year.

regards

Manic

What type of performance hit to you take on the host CPU with ESX 4 and these cards using a software initiator?

find the performance report which is released by Chelsio.

I have tested boot up time of a win xp VM on a ESX running on UCS blade with 10 gbps NFS storage.

it boots up in 4 sec

regards

Manic