HP-UX vPars 6.0 N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) - A brief overview
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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. LUNs should be presented either as NPIV storage or as AVIO storage, but not both
When a vPar is configured with a vHBA, the administrator should ensure that the vPar does not see the same set
of LUNs through an AVIO adapter. Doing so may result in data corruptions because the I/O stack in the vPar may
not identify these two instances as the same LUN.
Example: VSP H1 has a physical adapter FC1. A vPar V1 is created on H1 and is assigned a vHBA called vFC1.
Suppose there are a set of LUNs A, B, C, that are visible to the vPar via the vHBA and to the VSP via the physical
adapter FC1. In such a case, it is not recommended that the LUNs A, B, and C be assigned to V1 as AVIO devices.
NOTE:
It is recommended that LUNs assigned to vPars via vHBAs not be presented to
the VSP.
2. NPIV HBAs cannot be added or deleted from a running vPar.
3. There is no support for legacy device special files.
Legacy device special files are not supported for NPIV LUNs. In order to get ioscan to list the LUNs in a vPar that are
connected via NPIV, use “-nN” on the command line. (See figure 4)
Figure 4: Listing LUNs attached via an NPIV HBA
# ioscan –knNfC disk
Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description
===================================================================
disk 3 64000/0xfa00/0x1 esdisk CLAIMED DEVICE HP Virtual Disk
/dev/disk/disk3 /dev/disk/disk3_p2 /dev/rdisk/disk3 /dev/rdisk/disk3_p2
/dev/disk/disk3_p1 /dev/disk/disk3_p3 /dev/rdisk/disk3_p1 /dev/rdisk/disk3_p3
disk 4 64000/0xfa00/0xf esdisk CLAIMED DEVICE HP HSV300
/dev/disk/disk4 /dev/disk/disk4_p2 /dev/rdisk/disk4 /dev/rdisk/disk4_p2
/dev/disk/disk4_p1 /dev/disk/disk4_p3 /dev/rdisk/disk4_p1 /dev/rdisk/disk4_p3