A continuation of this article – Tweaking ESXi 4.1U1 – Adding un-supported hardware to VMware vSphere ESXi 4.1 U1 – Adding a QLE-220 to ESXi 4.1 U1.
No official support for the Qlogic QLE-220 in ESXi 5.0, vSphere GUI client before tweak
Because I’m also now testing Production VMware vSphere 5.0 (ESXi 5.0), and also need to connect the ESXi 5.0 servers to the fibre channel SAN using the same Qlogic QLE-220 4GB fibre channel cards. These are the PCI-E cards that fit in the HP ProLiant MicroServer quite nicely. As these Qlogic cards were NOT supported in ESXi 4.1, it’s unlikely they are supported in ESXi 5.0, and they are NOT, and not included on the HCL (Hardware Compatibility List).
Again, trying to get ahead of the curve, it will not be long, before I’m asked the same question as before with ESXi 4.x.
“ESXi 5.0 does not “see my network interface card, or storage controller.”
“How do I add this mass storage controller, network interface card, fibre channel HBA to ESXi?”
A.Andy’s Thoughts
It is my understanding, that rather than a single oem.tgz, which contains the simple.map Vendor and Device IDs of ESXi 4.x, the simple.map file has been broken down into likewise individual mapping files, /etc/vmware/driver.map.d reveals 60 individual map files which contain the Vendor Id and Device Ids similar to the original simple.map of ESXi 4.x.
ESXi 5.0 contents of /etc/vmware/driver.map.d
The file I need to modify is the qla2xxx.map file, to add the Vendor ID and Device ID. I may also have to alter the pci.ids files as well, but it’s unlikely!
the console command lspci -v reveals the same vendor ID and device ID
console output of lspci -v on ESXi 5.0
When ESXi 5.0 boots up you can see the individual driver modules files being extracted from their tarbal archives and loaded into ramdrive memory. These tarballs contain the mapping PCI ID mapping file and also the drivers for the device. All that is required is to add your new qla2xxx.map file (modified mapping file) into the scsi-qla.v00 tarballed file.
B. Adding the device to the mapping file
I’ve completed this by, extracting the original contents, including sub directories, copying my new mapping file, and creating a new archive.
- cd tmp
- mkdir tweak
- cd tweak
- cp /bootbank/scsi-qla.v00 scsi-qla.tgz
- tar -xvf scsi-qla.tgz
- rm scsi-qla.tgz
- Update and tweak the qla2xxx.map file.
-
Modifying the qla2xxx.map file to add additional Vendor and Device ID
- tar -cvzf scsi-qla.tgz etc usr
- mv scsi-qla.tgz scsi-qla.v00
- cp scsi-qla.v00 /bootbank/scsi-qla.v00
- restart server.
Qlogic QLE-220 in ESXi 5.0, vSphere GUI client after tweak
Viola! An un-supported Qlogic QLE-220 added and working in ESXi 5.0.
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