VMware ESXi - Brocade Fibre Channel (FC) HBA Installation

Installation of Brocade 425/825 Fibre Channel HBA Drivers on ESXi 5

This is a slightly out of date article, but might be of help to some people.

Brocade's adapter business seems to have been bought by QLogic, so you will need to go there to get the drivers.

1. Download the drivers  for the Brocade 425/825 FC HBA from here: http://driverdownloads.qlogic.com/QLogicDriverDownloads_UI/DefaultNewSearch.aspx
2. Upload the driver to your ESXi server using the Browse Datastore feature.
3. Enable SSH on the ESXi server (Configuration tab...Security Profile...Properties) and start the SSH service.
4. Put the ESXi server into Maintenance Mode.
5. Use Putty (or similar tool) to connect to the server and use these commands. Note that my driver file was called BCD-bfa-3.2.1.0-00000-offline_bundle-1108413.zip

• cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore/<YourUploadedFile>
• cp BCD-bfa-3.2.1.0-00000-offline_bundle-1108413.zip /tmp
• esxcli software vib install -d /tmp/BCD-bfa-3.2.1.0-00000-offline_bundle-1108413.zip

6. Once you get the success message, reboot the ESXi server and exit maintenance mode.
7. Confirm that the HBA has been installed by going to the host...Configuration Tab...Storage adapters.

That should be it!