SUSE-Specific Considerations

Linux
Audience
Public
Product
FlashBlade
FlashArray
Technology Integrations
Linux
Source Type
Documentation

Kernel and Driver Notes

SLES and openSUSE ship lpfc and qla2xxx HBA drivers in the standard kernel. SLES Enterprise subscribers have access to kernel live patching (kGraft) which does not require a reboot when applying kernel updates.

Check running kernel:

uname -r

Verify FC modules are loaded:

lsmod | grep -E "lpfc|qla2xxx|bnx2fc"

# Load manually if needed
sudo modprobe lpfc     # Broadcom/Emulex
sudo modprobe qla2xxx  # Marvell/QLogic

Make module load persistent:

echo "lpfc" | sudo tee -a /etc/modules-load.d/fc-hba.conf
# or
echo "qla2xxx" | sudo tee -a /etc/modules-load.d/fc-hba.conf

Package Management

Essential packages:

sudo zypper install -y \
    multipath-tools \
    lvm2 \
    sg3_utils \
    sysfsutils

# Performance monitoring tools
sudo zypper install -y \
    sysstat \
    iotop \
    htop

Verify installation:

multipath -ll
systemctl status multipathd

YaST Storage Notes

YaST provides a graphical interface for storage management on SLES. For FC storage:

  • YaST > System > Partitioner can show the multipath device once it is configured

  • For initial FC setup and multipath.conf configuration, CLI is recommended - YaST does not expose fine-grained multipath tuning parameters

  • After LVM is configured via CLI, YaST can be used to monitor and manage the volume group