Fcoe Support; Supported Distributions; Enabling Fcoe - Dell Broadcom NetXtreme Family of Adapters User Manual

VMware Driver Software: Broadcom NetXtreme II Network Adapter User Guide
queues will be set to 1, discarding the value of this parameter.
If you would like the use of more then 1 queue, force the number of NetQueues to use via the following command:
esxcfg-module -s "multi_mode=1 num_queues=<num of queues>" bnx2x
Otherwise, allow the bnx2x driver to select the number of NetQueues to use via the following command:
esxcfg-module -s "multi_mode=1 num_queues=0" bnx2x
The optimal number is to have the number of NetQueues match the number of CPUs on the machine.

FCoE Support

This section describes the contents and procedures associated with installation of the VMware software package for supporting
Broadcom FCoE C-NICs.
Drivers
Table 2: Broadcom NetXtreme II FCoE Drivers
Driver Description
This driver manages all PCI device resources (registers, host interface queues, etc.) and also acts as the Layer 2
VMware low-level network driver for Broadcom's NetXtreme II 10G device. This driver directly controls the hardware
bnx2x and is responsible for sending and receiving Ethernet packets on behalf of the VMware host networking stack. The
bnx2x driver also receives and processes device interrupts, both on behalf of itself (for L2 networking) and on behalf
of the bnx2fc (FCoE protocol) and cnic drivers.
The Broadcom VMware FCoE driver is a kernel mode driver used to provide a translation layer between the VMware
bnx2fc SCSI stack and the Broadcom FCoE firmware/hardware. In addition, the driver interfaces with the networking layer
to transmit and receive encapsulated FCoE frames on behalf of open-fcoe's libfc/libfcoe for FIP/device discovery.
The bnx2i driver is Broadcom VMware iSCSI HBA driver. Similar to bnx2fc, bnx2i is a kernel mode driver used to
bnx2i provide a translation layer between the VMware SCSI stack and the Broadcom iSCSI firmware/hardware. Bnx2i
functions under the open-iscsi framework.

Supported Distributions

The FCoE/DCB feature set is supported on VMware ESXi 5.0 and above.

Enabling FCoE

To enable FCoE hardware offload on the C-NIC
1. Determine the ports that are FCoE-capable:
# esxcli fcoe nic list
Output example:
vmnic4
User Priority: 3
Source MAC: FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
Active: false
Priority Settable: false
Source MAC Settable: false
VLAN Range Settable: false
1. Enable the FCoE interface:
# esxcli fcoe nic discover -n vmnicX
Where X is the interface number gained from esxcli fcoe nic list.
2. Verify that the interface is working:
# esxcli fcoe adapter list
Output example:
vmhba34
Source MAC: bc:30:5b:01:82:39
FCF MAC: 00:05:73:cf:2c:ea
VNPort MAC: 0e:fc:00:47:04:04
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