FCoE Boot from SAN (BFS) Limitations for uEFI BIOS

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Boot From SAN for Storage adapters works only with Legacy BIOS on ESX5.0/ESX5.5.
• Boot From SAN works with both Legacy BIOS and UEFI for ESX6.0.

Environment

• VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0
• VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
• VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1

Resolution

uEFI based FCoE BFS requires an FBPT based uEFI GUID search code for LUN identification. The uEFI GUID search code feature was not enabled in VMware ESX until the ESXi 6.0 GA release. Therefore, uEFI based FCoE BFS is only supported on ESXi 6.0 and later. Legacy FCoE BFS support is available on ESXi 5.1 and later.

The support matrix is as follows:

	Legacy BFS	uEFI BFS
ESXi 5.1	Supported	Not supported
ESXi 5.5	Supported	Not Supported
ESXi 6.0	Supported	Supported