White Papers

Introduction
5 Booting VMware ESXi from FCoE
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Introduction
This document is intended to help the user with configuring Dell EMC PowerEdge server and Dell EMC
supported FCoE CNA adapter to boot from SAN.
Audience and Scope
This whitepaper is intended for IT administrators planning to boot ESXi over FCoE LUN with DELL EMC
PowerEdge servers utilizing Dell S5000 switch which offers converged network capabilities and Dell
Compellent SC8000 storage center controller which provides failover capabilities and support datacenter
requirements. The whitepaper covers switch and storage configurations to set up ESXi installation over FCoE
LUN exposed to the fabric.
Hardware and Software Requirements
To boot VMware ESXi from an FCoE LUN, following components are required:
• A Converged network adapter (CNA)
For more information about Dell EMC supported FCoE CNAs, see VMware Compatibility Guide.
• Ethernet link
• FCoE capable switch
• Storage array with FCoE IO card(s)
The CNA adapter can be based on hardware or software (capable of running FCoE software stack).
Hardware FCoE adapters contain network and fibre channel functionalities on the same card. When the host
is installed with the hardware FCoE adapter, the hosts can use both the CNA components. The networking
components appear as a standard network adapter (vmnic), and the Fibre channel component appears as an
FCoE adapter (vmhba) in the vSphere client.
A software based FCoE adapter uses software code to perform FCoE processing. The software adapter must
be added before using the software based FCoE adapter as a NIC supporting partial FCoE offload. To add
the software adapter, navigate to Datacenter→Host→Configure→Storage Adapters→Add Software FCoE
Adapter. Select the appropriate Physical network adapter and VLAN ID, if any.
The Ethernet link must be an extension to existing Ethernet and provide similar lossless behavior like Fibre
channel links, where frames are not lost during congestion, as FCoE enables FC over existing Ethernet. An
FCoE switch is an L2 switch capable of transporting FCoE frames over Ethernet. This is also termed as data
center bridging (DCB) switch supports both Ethernet and native FC traffic on its interfaces.
The FCoE capable switch has the capabilities to converge LAN and SAN traffic over a single 10GbE
connection to optimize enterprise-scale data center for maximum flexibility and scalability.
The testbed setup used in the above example to explain the FCoE boot for VMware ESXi comprises of the
following hardware:
• Dell EMC PowerEdge R630 server
• QLogic BCM57xxx series CNA adapter