As you mentioned VMware has introduced an optional driver model in ESX server 5.5,
called "Native Device Driver architecture" that gets rid of the vmklinux shim layer between the linux based driver and the vmkernel.
This should in theory give us more stable and better performant drivers.
Qlogic is one of the first to take advantage of this with the qlnativefc driver,
wich also is a consolidated driver supporting 24/25/2600 series and 80/81/82/8300 series in one single driver.
I am suprised over the HP response as HP has certified 3PAR for 3.1 3.1.2 and 3.1.3 with the exeption of metro storage cluster, that is only supported under 3.1.3.
We did extensive pre-production testing, but decided to go for 3.1.3 because of certification. Holding back other environments, but 5.5 is coming, and most of our installations are using peer persistance...
What driver version are you using? It might be advicable to use the latest oob drivers,
as the inbox drivers are lagging.
The new driver have also started with the 7.x releases of the HBA FW,
and I suspect we might stumble on to some potential early issues there.
We never even tried the inbox driver on 5.5, got the latest from Qlogic.
You can get the 1.1.20.0-1 driver here:
https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/deta ... FC-11200-1We've also been vigilant about upgrading Brocade FOS prior to this,
but that can backfire as well. I suspect we might have run into a compability issue with older FW from the 5.1 inbox drivers...