You must activate software FCoE adapters so that your ESXi host can use them to access Fibre Channel storage.

Note: Starting from vSphere 7.0, VMware no longer supports software FCoE in production environments.

The number of software FCoE adapters you can activate corresponds to the number of physical FCoE NIC ports on your host. ESXi supports the maximum of four software FCoE adapters on one host.

Prerequisites

Set up networking for the software FCoE adapter.

Procedure

  1. In the vSphere Client, navigate to the ESXi host.
  2. Click the Configure tab.
  3. Under Storage, click Storage Adapters, and click the Add Software Adapter icon.
  4. Select Software FCoE Adapter.
  5. On the Add Software FCoE Adapter dialog box, select an appropriate vmnic from the drop-down list of physical network adapters.
    Only those adapters that are not yet used for FCoE traffic are listed.
  6. Click OK.
    The software FCoE adapter appears on the list of storage adapters.

Results

After you activate the software FCoE adapter, you can view its properties. If you do not use the adapter, you can remove it from the list of adapters.