MLNX-OFED-ESX-1.8.3 for vSphere 5.5

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

tjk

Active Member
Mar 3, 2013
481
199
43
This is a beta driver for Mellanox 1.8.3 for vSphere.

MLNX-OFED-ESX-1.8.3 Main Changes (from 1.8.2.4)
---------------------------------------------------
- Added iSER support

Get it from the link below when still available.

salesforce.com

iSCSI RDMA (iSER) Performance Acceleration - Demo | Mellanox Interconnect Community
Mark,

Thanks! I'm not familiar with iSER, how/why would one use iSER over SRP with ESX?

If I use iSER, do I still need to setup IP's and setup MPIO, etc? With SRP, no IP's needed, and you see the targets on each interface, and just select RR for path selection.

Also, are you aware of any SRP target software for Windows 2012 R2? Or for that matter, maybe iSER target for Windows 2012 R2 works?

Edit - InfiniBand/RDMA for Storage - SRP vs. iSER not a bad deck talking about the difference between iSER and SRP, but not a lot of details either, very high level.
 
Last edited:

markpower28

Active Member
Apr 9, 2013
413
104
43
There is no development on SRP for years. For many people it's a dead end. iSER (iSCSI over RDMA) is what Mellanox pushing in the last couple years. For none windows environment (vSphere, Solaris, Linux, etc) it will be a good RDMA alternative.

There is no multipath for SRP. And for iSER multipath is just like any other iSCSI multipath you will do (two NICs, two subnet, etc).

The last SRP target for windows is Windows 2008 R2. Windows 2012 and above, for RDMA you will need SMB 3.0. Not sure about iSER for Windows is in the work yet.
 

tjk

Active Member
Mar 3, 2013
481
199
43
SRP didn't do active/active multipath, but it let me see the targets on both interfaces and fail-over if need be, I tested by pulling one of the interfaces on the ESX node and it kept running on the other one, no issues inside the VM either.

Would be nice to see iSER for Windows target functionality, SMB 3 is nice, but doesn't help if you want to present storage to VMware. IPoIB works ok, but obviously not as fast as SRP or iSER would be.

Thanks again Mark, seems like you and I share a passion for Infiniband and fast storage! :)
 
Last edited:

pred

New Member
Apr 16, 2016
3
0
1
39
Can someone pls provide a download link to the 1.8.3 ofed drivers? (salesforce download link does not work any more)
 

epicurean

Active Member
Sep 29, 2014
785
80
28
The link is gone. I second the request for another download link. Much Much appreciated