iSCSI Broadcom HBA

Check out this. It's a firmware that seems to allow iSCSI boot on the onboard (Lan-On-Motherboard) Broadcom nics on several of the newer models.

It is more that just iSCSI boot that I'm interested in though. I'd like to use the iSCSI accleration features with in Linux.

I *believe* it acts as an iSCSI HBA, but I can't find a driver for it yet. (It appears a linux bnx2i driver is the one I'm looking for)

It's all rather frustrating. At the broadcom site they advertise the 5708 as having iscsi offload engine capabilities, and in THEIR Linux drivers README it says
:- The bnx2 driver is the networking driver and the cnic driver supports additional features required by the bnx2i iSCSI offload driver. The bnx2i iSCSI driver is packaged separately.

..and after contacting them, they told me to speak to dell to get the bnx2i drivers. I fired a couple of e-mails off to dell and actually got back EXACTLY what I expected, information concerning TOE and iscsi boot, but this is not what I wanted. There is little point in pursuing this because they (or the card) are obviously not supporting the iscsi feature.

Compare this with the hp NC373T site (5708 controller chip)
http://tinyurl.com/2eueoj
....HP are falling over themselves to give you all the drivers and utilities for iscsi offload.
According to the HP "readme" for the HP RH5 iscsi drivers "this RPM contains the HP tested and approved ISCSI offload bnx2i driver"

Now It has to be said, that the bnx2i drivers seem to be in a "state of development" and perhaps this is why dell are backing away from support for it.
However this is odd because it is usually HP that are more cautious then dell.

Or perhaps I am simply showing my ignorance by assuming that their is "iscsi offload" built into the card because it is a "5708".
Perhaps not all 5708s are created equal.

I'm getting a dell 1950 + 5708 server in the next two weeks and I'm going to give the HP linux drivers a go.

Any chance you got the HP driver working? I was able to compile and load both the bnx2i and bnx2 driver update provided, and it appeared that the device loaded properly without a license key. However, when trying to get open-iscsi to use the driver, it failed miserably. Not sure what happened, and don't have the system configured that way anymore (had to get it up and running for some testing).

 

I'll try again later this week, but I might just use my Intel card and the ioatdma drivers.

 

Tarun 

the HP drivers bnx2i installed as they should do, but without having the iscsi offload activated on the 5708, then were useless. They worked perfectly with a HP "5708" card, but soon as its swapped for the dell ...... 

 

I managed to speak to someone in dell who knew all about iscsi offload and the 5708, and he said that there were plans to make a key available, but he could not give me a date. 

 

The license key mentioned is the TOE key that plugs into the motherboard. When the 9th gen servers were pre-release Dell were considering selling the TOE key as an option but on release each system had them fitted as standard

 

To support iscsi an iscsi TOE key would be required and i don't believe they are shipped yet, if at all.

Well, well...

 

If you are using the linux RPM repos, there is now a bnx2i driver available for download.

 

Specifically here is the info from that package:

This package contains Broadcom's NetXtremeII DKMS framework iSCSI offload driver.  The bnx2id executable is licensed under a Broadcom proprietary license.  The rest of the files are licensed under the GPL.

 

I'll test it out tomorrow.

Tarun 

Test thoroughly, almost all new technology is released as feed for the lemmings :smileyhappy:

 

the technology has been around for more than a year. Both HP and IBM have been using the broadcom HBA drivers for thier 5708 chips, so although the drivers are new to dell, there is nothing new about them.  Still it is all pretty redundant if dell do not ship the licences for iscsi ofload (not to be conused with TOE offload, or "iscsi boot")

 

Still just read

Dell Update Package to update the LOM (integrated network connection or LAN On Motherboard) Firmware of supported systems to add iSCSI offload licensing support. This firmware does not add licenses for iSCSI offload, only the capability of processing licenses. Please contact Dell Sales and Support for information on purchasing iSCSI offload licenses.

 

(from the 5708 FW upgrade) 

..I will chase this up on Monday 

I was wondering if anybody has any new info on the bnx2i driver? I have a PE1435SC which I've been trying to connect to a Promise M300i iSCSI target without luck. Using iscsi-initiator-utils from Centos repo I can login but then get scsi errors and can't see the device. Then I stumbled on the bnx2i driver and have been trying to get that to work with no success. I can connect to the Promise from another server with a QLogic HBA but if I try it from the Dell server I get:

 

Nov 21 14:03:50 astonmartin kernel: sd 15:0:0:0: Device not ready: <6>: Current: sense key: Not Ready
Nov 21 14:03:50 astonmartin kernel:     Add. Sense: Logical unit not ready, manual intervention required
Nov 21 14:03:50 astonmartin kernel:
Nov 21 14:03:50 astonmartin kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 0

 

Reading <ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>. I am even more confused. First off I don't get much of the output in /var/log/messages that the page mentions. This lead me to believe the bnx2i driver doesn't support the PE1435SC, but I don't get any messages saying it's not supported which I thought was weird.

 

Using info from lspci I tried running

iscsiadm -m node --targetname=iqn.1994-12.com.promise.8.17.34.55.1.0.0.20 --portal 193.4.59.101 --op=update --name=node.transport_name --value=bcm570x-020000

iscsiadm -m node --targetname=iqn.1994-12.com.promise.8.17.34.55.1.0.0.20 --portal 193.4.59.101 --login

 

But I get this error:

iscsiadm: initiator reported error (12 - iSCSI driver not found. Please make sure it is loaded, and retry the operation)

 

The documentation says "Install and run the open-iscsi programs, iscsid and iscsiadm, from the Broadcom distributed open-iscsi packages" but I can't find this special open-iscsi package anywhere. All I've been using is the open-iscsi (iscsi-initiator-utils) package from the Centos repo.

So I have found out a bit more... but not yet successful. Waiting on the iSCSI Offload licence key. If you are trying to get it, try asking for SKU 430-2972. It's not in the normal catalog and I haven't gotten confirmation that it is available, but I'm hoping.

In addition, for RedHat/Centos 5.3, you'll need bnx2i-1.3.12-2.3dkms.noarch.rpm and netxtreme2-4.6.0-1.3dkms.noarch.rpm plus a patched version of the iscsi-initator-utils. I've patched the Broadcom patches to the latest version of the 5.3 iscsi-initator-utils rpm and created an SRPM for it. (The ones in Dell's repo are only good for RedHat 5.2)

 

http://tarunreddy.com/downloads/iscsi-initiator-utils-6.2.0.868-0.18f.src.rpm

Were you ever successful in obtaining that iSCSI key? I've got a PowerEdge 2900 with four 5708s, 2 LOMs and 2 PCIs. The PCIs have the iSCSI offload engine but the LOMs don't, which, as you pointed out, makes no sense whatsoever since they're identical.

Thanks.