Emulex LPe31000/LPe36000 Fibre Channel Target Mode HBAs
Target-mode support for Broadcom/Emulex Gen 6 and Gen 7 Fibre Channel host bus adapters, including the LPe31004 (32 Gb) and LPe36000 (64 Gb) families. These cards sit in storage arrays and similar appliances, letting a Linux server present itself as a Fibre Channel storage target to SAN clients rather than as an initiator.
recommendation
It should stay in the kernel because the underlying hardware is current: Broadcom still actively sells both the LPe31000 and LPe36000 Emulex HBA lines in 2025, and the code itself has seen substantive commits through mid-2025 with no removal discussion on the kernel mailing lists. This is mainstream, in-production enterprise storage hardware with an engaged vendor.
repository signals
sources
- cateee.net
CONFIG_SCSI_EFCT is the in-tree efct module for Emulex Fibre Channel Target, present through current kernel heads, and matches PCI IDs 10df:e307 and 10df:f407 used by this driver.
- docs.broadcom.com
Broadcom's current Emulex Fibre Channel HBA product guide still lists both LPe36000 and LPe31000 families, indicating ongoing product-line support and market presence.
- docs.broadcom.com
A 2025-published Broadcom product brief documents the LPe36000-series as current Gen 7 Fibre Channel HBAs.
- investors.broadcom.com
Broadcom announced immediate availability of the Emulex Gen 7 LPe36000-series in 2021, aligning with the driver's LPE36000 device string.
- docs.broadcom.com
Broadcom product brief for LPe31004/LPe32000 documents LPe31004-M6 models, aligning with the driver's LPE31004 device string.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local shell inspection of efct_driver.c and efct_hw.h showed this is a real PCI FC target driver for Emulex/Broadcom devices e307/f407, with model strings LPE31004 and LPE36000. Local shell git log (git -c safe.directory=... log -- drivers/scsi/elx/efct) showed substantive upstream activity through 2025-06-27 and 2026-01-28 plus treewide touches in 2026, so maintenance is active rather than dormant. Web search on lore.kernel.org queries for efct/removal returned no hits, so I found no evidence of an active upstream removal series. URLs were obtained via web search; the kernel activity evidence came from local shell commands. Because Broadcom still publishes current product material covering both supported families and the driver is actively maintained, this is not a deprecation candidate.