After much effort to configure this as a test in my Home Lab I have read some conflicting articles and need a verdict.
I have an old IBM 3650 M3 that runs esxi 5.5 and openfiler 2.99.1 in a VM it works great until I try to add FC to the equation.
My qlogic cards 2462 firmware is updated (3.29) and the latest esxi drivers (vib) installed. ESXi 5.5 sees the card fine. The problem comes when the FC target is created
the initiator (another server running esxi 5.5) connected with 4gbs cable (point to point--no switch) cannot see the target. If I setup openfiler on bare metal with no esxi it works fine. and the other esxi server initiator sees the target.
I am new to SAN and can't tell if this is just my improper configuration of the VM running openfiler or if this is not best practice so esxi doesn't allow this.
Thanks in advance.
Addendum
I moved this as I realized it was posted in wrong forum
Also to clarify further, the esxi "storage" server running the openfiler vm can see the qlogic card in openfiler if I enable pci passthrough and it works fine--ie the other esxi server can see the FC target. I understood from my readings that passthrough was a "bad thing" on esxi so was trying to get more information on the best setup for the FC card. This very well may be a limitation of openfiler which I now understand is "dead".