HP-UX vPars 6.0 N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) - A brief overview

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HP-UX vPars 6.0 N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV)

A brief overview

Technical white paper

Table of contents

Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 2

Intended audience .................................................................................................................... 2

About NPIV .................................................................................................................................. 3

Benefits of NPIV ........................................................................................................................... 5

NPIV dependencies and prerequisites ............................................................................................. 6

Software dependencies ............................................................................................................. 6

Hardware dependencies ............................................................................................................ 6

Verifying that the VSP can support NPIV ...................................................................................... 6

Limits and limitations ..................................................................................................................... 8

Additional caveats .................................................................................................................... 8

Virtual World Wide Name management ......................................................................................... 9

Using GUID Manager to automatically allocate IDs ....................................................................... 9

Allocating IDs manually or with third-party products ...................................................................... 9

Specifying an NPIV resource ........................................................................................................ 10

Configuring an NPIV HBA with vPar commands ............................................................................. 11

vparcreate/vparmodify—to add an NPIV resource ..................................................................... 11

vparstatus .............................................................................................................................. 11

vparmodify—to delete an NPIV resource ................................................................................... 12

Setting up a vPar to use NPIV HBAs .............................................................................................. 13

Configuring storage for a vPar with vHBAs ................................................................................ 13

Identifying vHBAs and LUNs in a vPar ....................................................................................... 13

Identifying the VFC Controller’s creation in a virtual environment .................................................. 14

Accessing the NPIV LUNs from EFI ............................................................................................ 15

Known issues ............................................................................................................................. 16

For more information ................................................................................................................... 18

Summary of content (18 pages)

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HP-UX vPars 6.0 N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) A brief overview Technical white paper Table of contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................2 Intended audience ....................................................................................................................2 About NPIV...................................................................................................................
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Introduction The mission-critical converged infrastructure is the foundation for the next decade of computing. The newest line of HP Integrity systems combines years of trusted HP Integrity resiliency with HP BladeSystem efficiencies.
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About NPIV Starting with HP-UX vPars version 6.0, HP introduces a new feature based on the NPIV technology, which is a feature provided by the Fibre Channel Protocol. NPIV allows creation of multiple virtual Fibre Channel ports (VFCs) over one physical Fibre Channel port (PFC) on a Virtualization Services Platform (VSP), where the VSP serves as the management platform for the vPars.
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Figure 1 shows two vPars, both with vHBAs. Figure 1: NPIV presentation vPar V1 vPar V2 NPIV HBA v-WWN1 NPIV HBA v-WWN2 FC HBA P-WWN v-WWN1 v-WWN2 SAN D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 D1–D6: LUNs Yellow: vPar V1 Green: vPar V2 Tri - color: VSP and vPars Here, the VSP has a single physical Fibre Channel HBA with p-WWN as its WWN. Assume the LUNs D1-D6 exist behind this physical Fibre Channel HBA.
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Benefits of NPIV This chapter lists a few of the benefits of attaching storage via NPIV: Storage isolation With shared (AVIO) storage, it is required that the VSP has access to all of the storage that is presented to the vPars. With NPIV, the targets and LUNs are discovered by the vPar directly as soon as a vHBA is created. These LUNs need not be accessible or even visible to the VSP.
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NPIV dependencies and prerequisites Software dependencies NPIV is supported on HP-UX Virtual Partitions 6.0, on the HP-UX 11i v3 September 2011 update release or later. Note: Please read the release notes for HP-UX vPars 6.0 before configuring NPIV. Hardware dependencies This functionality requires a hardware I/O stack which explicitly supports NPIV, from the HBAs, through the interconnect modules and SAN fabric and on to the individual Fibre Channel devices.
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The output to fcmsutil is in figure 2. Figure 2: Using fcmsutil to determine whether NPIV is supported.
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Limits and limitations This section captures the various limits that currently apply to the NPIV feature and the few restrictions associated with it. These restrictions may be removed in future releases. Table 1: NPIV Limits Description Supported limit vHBAs per vPar 8 Number of vHBAs per physical HBA 8 Number of paths per NPIV LUN 8 Number of LUNs per vHBA 2048 Number of NPIV LUNs per vPar 2048 Additional caveats 1.
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Virtual World Wide Name management Using GUID Manager to automatically allocate IDs HP recommends using the GUID Manager product (GUIDMgr), which is included with vPars 6.0, and allowing it to handle WWNs for you automatically. The GUIDMgr provides a mechanism to manage unique WWNs so that the same ID is not reallocated until freed, to avoid the possibility of data corruption that arises when the same LUNs are presented to multiple vPars by mistake. GUIDMgr is integrated with HP-UX vPars 6.
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Specifying an NPIV resource An NPIV resource is specified for vPars using the following format: devicetype:adaptertype:bus,device,vPWWN,vNWWN:storage:device Where: devicetype: This is the virtual device type as seen in the vPar. For NPIV this will be “hba” adaptertype: This is the adapter “type” as seen in the vPar.
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Configuring an NPIV HBA with vPar commands There are no changes to the options available with the vPar commands in order to support NPIV. All that is required is the use of the new NPIV I/O syntax with the –a option. The following sections describe how an NPIV resource is specified and the existing vPar commands that can be used for configuring/managing them.
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vparmodify—to delete an NPIV resource The vparmodify command is also used to delete a vHBA from a vPar. The NPIV resource specification may be copied directly from the vparstatus output. Example: vparmodify -p vPar1 \ -d hba:avio_stor:0,4,0x50060b00006499b8,0x50060b00006499b9:npiv:/dev/fcd1 NOTE: The vPar must be DOWN to execute this command.
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Setting up a vPar to use NPIV HBAs Configuring storage for a vPar with vHBAs Storage can be provisioned for a vPar with a vHBA either before or after it starts up. In both cases, the vPar boots successfully if it has a non-NPIV boot LUN configured. If it doesn’t have a boot LUN yet, then the vPar halts at EFI. Once a virtual environment starts, the virtual port instance corresponding to the vHBA(s) assigned to it logs into the FC fabric to which the physical HBA is connected.
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Note that the ioscan output listing of targets and LUNs on the vHBA in the vPar is the same as a listing of SAN LUNs on a standalone system (other than the driver used to access the device): # ioscan -kfNH 0/0/4/0 Class I H/W Path ======= == ========================================= ext_bus 1 0/0/4/0 tgtpath 3 0/0/4/0.0x207000c0ffda0287 HBA target served by gvsd driver, target port id 0x105ef lunpath 5 0/0/4/0.0x207000c0ffda0287.0x0 lunpath 8 0/0/4/0.0x207000c0ffda0287.0x4001000000000000 lunpath 9 0/0/4/0.
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Since only V1 is on, and it only has one vHBA, there is only 1 VFC: # ioscan -kfnNd fcd Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description ===================================================================== fc 0 0/0/0/5/0/0/0 fcd CLAIMED INTERFACE HP 451871-B21 8Gb Dual Port PCIe Fibre Channel Mezzanine (FC Port 1) /dev/fcd0 fc 1 0/0/0/5/0/0/1 fcd CLAIMED INTERFACE HP 451871-B21 8Gb Dual Port PCIe Fibre Channel Mezzanine (FC Port 2) /dev/fcd1 fc 2 0/0/0/5/0/0/1.
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Known issues 1. With the default driver configuration, typical vPar O/S installations have their boot storage LUNs enumerated and configured in EFI to provide for quicker vPar startup times. However, the default driver configuration may not map all the NPIV devices. To overcome this, once the vPar boot process reaches the EFI shell, issue the command: Shell> drvcfg –s HP AVIO Stor Driver Configuration ================================== Warning: Enumerating all SCSI or FC LUNs increases initialization times.
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With that information, the SAN Administrator should be able to modify FC switch zoning so that the unresponsive FC targets are no longer presented to the NPIV HBA. 1. Get the port WWN of the NPIV HBAs where the probe takes too long.
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For more information To read more about HP-UX vPars, go to www.hp.com/go/vpars. Step into higher levels of server efficiency and flexibility with HP-UX virtualization. To learn more, visit www.hp.com/go/hpuxvirtualization. © Copyright 2011 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services.