Fiber Channel HBA suggestions

[thedatadigger]

I am looking for a Fiber Channel HBA that is supported in linux kernel 2.6 that is a single channel, interchangeable (copper/optical) card. I have one right now, an Adaptec 9110G but it is not supported in linux at all. I am just looking for suggestions, I am new to the whole HBA thing and I would like to avoid having multiple cards, due to extensibility issues. I have been looking around but any helpful suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[scheesman]

What SAN are you using? Believe it or not, not all Fibre Channel interacts with each other properly. Your SAN provider should have a hardware compatibility list that will help you choose the proper brand.

 

[thedatadigger]

well, to be honest we are developing a generic utility that should potentially work with an undetermined SAN, or a SAN that is determined based on the card we select, or another possibility is multiple cards (not in the box at the same time) each one for a different SAN. I am also open to the possibility of a dual channel card that is copper on one channel and optical on the other. I did find the HP AD193A but it does not appear to be supported in anything but HP-UX. Sorry if it seems like I am being vague, this is really research for product development and I can't exactly divulge full details of the end result at this time.

 

[RMGBELGIUM]

Most vendors of san have a special firmware ( like EMC does ) or require a certain version of firmware.Most vendors have very strict compatibility matrices for SAN,and are certifying only optical cards for Fiberchannel environments.So if you are already having a hard time getting a supported card for a server OS,you will have even a harder time finding a card that is supported by server OS and storage vendor.

 

[Breslau]

I haven't seen a card with a swappable GBIC port in several years. And on top of that, the only ones we ever had here would take just SC ended optical cables.

Is there some reason you need to use copper? why not just go to optical cables across the board?

I don't manage any linux boxes, but I'm pretty sure most of the major brands would support the OS. the guys that handle linux here use qlogic i believe.

Disk vendors can get picky sometimes on switch OS versions. Like someone has alluded to already, the folks that sell you the disk subsystem should have a compatibility matrix that will show you which switches they support and at what firmware/OS version.

 

[thedatadigger]

We need to use copper based on customer specification, merely for compatibility issues, it looks like we wont be able to use GBICs. We have settled on two different QLogic cards as we have already had some success using those, the QLA2310 and QLA2310F. QLogic is supported without any extra drivers in the lk 2.6 so we feel comfortable using it. I thank everyone for their input and hopefully I can get experienced enough at this stuff to be helpful to some one else.

I final note, we did find a piece of hardware that has two GBIC ports that essentially acts as a passthrough, i.e. optical switch w/ optical GBIC in to hardware, copper GBIC out of hardware to box or other switch.