EMC P/N 300-002-803 manual Purpose of this document, Host connectivity, Fibre Channel

Introduction

Purpose of this document

This document is meant to assist in the installation and configuration of QLogic Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) and Fibre Channel Over Ethernet (FCoE) converged network adapters (CNAs), and iSCSI HBAs in Linux environments. The focus of this document is to enable the integrated QLogic driver in the Linux distributions for EMC®-supported QLogic adapters or Fibre Channel adapters or to set up Linux hosts using the EMC-supported driver for QLogic adapters, available from the EMC-approved section of the QLogic website.

Host connectivity

Review the EMC Support Matrix or contact your EMC representative for the latest information on qualified adapters, drivers, and Linux distributions.

Note: EMC does not support mixing different types of Fibre Channel adapter (including different types from the same vendor) in a server.

Fibre Channel

The Fibre Channel adapter driver functions as a device driver layer below the standard Linux SCSI adapter driver. The Fibre Channel interface therefore is transparent to the Linux disk administration system.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet

EMC supports the QLogic Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) Converged Network Adapter (CNA). FCoE adapters provide a method to converge both Fibre Channel and Ethernet traffic over a single physical link to a switch infrastructure which manages both storage (SAN) and network (IP) connectivity within a single unit.

The benefits of FCoE technology become apparent in large data centers:

◆Where dense, rack-mounted and blade server chassis exist.

◆Where physical cable topology simplification is a priority.

16

EMC Host Connectivity with QLogic FC and iSCSI HBAs and FCoE CNAs for the Linux Environment