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System Manager Classic

FC configuration for ESXi using VSC overview

Contributors netapp-forry netapp-thomi NetAppZacharyWambold

Using the ONTAP System Manager classic interface (ONTAP 9.7 and earlier), you can quickly set up the FC service on a storage virtual machine (SVM), provision a LUN, and make the LUN available as a datastore using an FC HBA on an ESX host computer.

Use this procedure if:

  • You are using a supported version of Virtual Storage Console for VMware vSphere (VSC) to configure storage settings for your ESX host and to provision the datastores.

    • Beginning with VSC 7.0, VSC is part of the ONTAP Tools for VMware vSphere virtual appliance, which includes VSC, vStorage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) Provider, and Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for VMware vSphere capabilities.

    • Be sure to check the NetApp Interoperability Matrix Tool to confirm compatibility between your current ONTAP and VSC releases.

  • Your network uses IPv4 addressing.

  • You are using traditional FC HBAs on ESXi 5.x and traditional FC switches.

    This procedure does not cover FCoE.

  • You have at least two FC target ports available on each node in the cluster.

    Onboard FC and UTA2 (also called “CNA”) ports, as well as some adapters are configurable. Configuring those ports is done in the ONTAP CLI and is not covered in this procedure.

  • You are not configuring FC SAN boot.

  • You are creating datastores on the host.

    This procedure does not cover raw device mapping (RDM) disks or using N-port ID virtualization (NPIV) to provide FC directly to VMs.

For more information, see TR-4597: VMware vSphere for ONTAP and the documentation for your VSC release.