8GB Emulex HBAs may not react to RSCN events properly on older firmware versions

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

When performing any level of SAN maintenance that causes devices to drop from the fabric, ESX hosts with 8GB Emulex FC HBAs may not react properly to RSCN events and fail to react to the device change.

The will result in either partial dead paths to the array or an APD condition.

Environment

VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0

Cause

This is a known issue for 8GB Emulex HBAs, such as the LPe12000 HBA running firmware version 2.00a3 or older.

Resolution

This issue has been corrected in firmware version 2.00a4 and later versions.

The firmware for LPe12000 HBA can be downloaded from the Emulex website.

For more information on recommended firmware versions for Emulex HBAs, see When using Emulex HBAs, SCSI commands fail with the status: Storage Initiator Error (1029456).

Additional Information

Release notes for the 2.00a4 firmware confirm the issue dealing with RSCN events. For more information, see the release notes. When using Emulex HBAs, small computer system interface (SCSI) commands fail with the status: Storage Initiator Error