QLogic ISP4xxx and ISP82xx/83xx iSCSI HBAs and CNAs
A family of dedicated iSCSI host bus adapters and converged network adapters that QLogic (now Marvell) shipped to enterprise storage customers from the mid-2000s through the mid-2010s, including the ISP4010/4022/4032 iSCSI HBAs and the ISP8022/8032/8042 CNAs. They let servers boot from and talk to iSCSI SAN storage with hardware offload, rather than using a software initiator over a regular NIC.
recommendation
Worth keeping but flagging as legacy. Upstream is still actively maintaining the code, with bug fixes accepted into the SCSI tree as recently as mid-2025, so users with existing ISP4xxx/82xx/83xx hardware are not stranded. However, the cards have not been sold new for years, Marvell's current marketing has moved on to newer FastLinQ adapters, and Red Hat already deprecated qla4xxx in RHEL 9.4 with plans to drop it in a future major release. An in-tree note explaining its legacy status would help set expectations.
repository signals
sources
- spinics.net
Public linux-scsi patch traffic for qla4xxx existed in June 2025, showing non-trivial maintenance activity.
- spinics.net
Martin K. Petersen replied that the June 2025 qla4xxx fix was applied to 6.16/scsi-fixes, confirming current upstream acceptance.
- cateee.net
LKDDb maps CONFIG_SCSI_QLA_ISCSI/qla4xxx to QLogic ISP4010/4022/4032 and 8022/8032/8042 iSCSI devices, i.e. an older dedicated iSCSI HBA/CNA family still present in current kernels.
- access.redhat.com
Red Hat states qla4xxx was deprecated starting with RHEL 9.4 and will be removed in a future major RHEL release.
- marvell.com
Marvell's current CNA marketing focuses on newer FastLinQ families, not the older ISP4xxx/82xx/83xx qla4xxx hardware, supporting the view that qla4xxx hardware is legacy rather than current-sales.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real PCI SCSI/iSCSI driver: local Kconfig/Makefile inspection via shell showed CONFIG_SCSI_QLA_ISCSI building qla4xxx for QLogic ISP4XXX/82XX/83XX. Upstream activity check used local git log (shell) plus web search results on public mailing-list archives: June 18 2025 patch and June 24 2025 applied reply, plus Jan 13 2026 workqueue patch, indicate active bug-fix/tree-adaptation traffic and no obvious removal series found. Deployment evidence came from web-search hits to LKDDb, Red Hat's deprecation notice, and Marvell current product pages; together they suggest legacy enterprise installs remain, but new deployments are rare and current new-sales focus has moved elsewhere. Chose keep-annotate rather than deprecate/remove because upstream is still maintaining it despite distro-level deprecation.