Emulex LightPulse LPe12000 / LPe16000 / OCe14000 Not Detected in ESXi 8.x (Unsupported Devices Fibre Channel)

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

After upgrading the ESXi host 8.0.0 build-20513097 below HBAs are not being detected.

• Emulex LPe12000-series 8Gb/s PCIe 2.0 FC HBA
• Emulex LPe16000-series 16Gb/s PCIe 2.0 FC HBA
• Emulex OCe14000-series 10GbE FCoE Adapter

Upgrading to ESXi 80U3 from ESXi 7.x reports incompatible below warning:

Unsupported Devices Fibre Channel [10df:f100 10df:f100] Fibre Channel [10df:f100 10df:f100] found on the host.

On the impacted host we can detect the same HBAs of that impacted version :

Environment

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

Below HBA Adapters have reached End of Life and not supported in ESXi 8.x:

• Emulex LPe12000-series
• Emulex LPe16000-series 
• Emulex OCe14000-series

Broadcom Emulex End of Life HBA models not detected with 14.0.x.x drivers

Resolution

• Remove the unsupported hardware and perform the upgrade to ESXi 8.x
• Upgrade to 16Gb/s LPe31000-series or 32Gb/s LPe32000-series PCIe 3.0 FC HBA or newer Emulex FC HBA
• There is no upgrade path for the OCE14000 10GbE FCoE Adapter