HP-UX vPars and Integrity VM V6.3 Administrator Guide

7 NPIV with vPars and Integrity VM
NPIV allows you to create multiple virtual Fibre Channel ports (vFCs) over one physical Fibre
Channel port (pFC) on a VSP. To identify a virtual port, you must create the virtual port with a
unique World Wide Name (WWN), just like the unique embedded WWN by which a physical
port is identified.
Using the NPIV feature, you can allocate the vFC instances created over a physical port as resources
to vPar and VM guests. The resource that is added to the vPar or VM is a virtual Host Bus Adapter
or virtual HBA (vHBA). The vPar or VM guest then automatically discovers targets and LUNs behind
the vHBA using the same mechanism used on a standalone system to discover targets and LUNs
behind a physical HBA.
With the introduction of NPIV, vPars and VM guests can now support two kinds of devices:
• Legacy AVIO (shared I/O, attached I/O)
• LUNs visible with the vHBA (NPIV HBAs)
NPIV devices can co-exist with legacy AVIO devices in the same vPar or VM guest. Unlike legacy
AVIO storage, the NPIV LUNs do not need to be visible to the VSP and therefore, the LUNs that
the vPar or VM guest will discover behind the vHBA can be managed and provisioned the same
way as on a standalone system.
NOTE: NPIV is supported only on HP-UX 11i v3 guests.
The same LUN cannot be presented to a vPar or VM guest as both an NPIV device and legacy
AVIO device.
7.1 Benefits of NPIV
Following are some of the benefits of NPIV:
• Provides storage isolation between vPar or VM guests and the VSP, and among vPar or VM
guests.
• Provides security and I/O traffic isolation by providing LUN masking and zoning capabilities
similar to regular FC LUNs.
• Allows running of applications that require un-virtualized device access on the vPar.
• Allows monitoring the server and storage environment using charge back applications.
• Streamlines vPar and VM guest migrations.
For more information about NPIV and its benefits, see HP-UX vPars 6.0 and Integrity VM 4.3 N_Port
ID Virtualization (NPIV) white paper at http://www.hp.com/go/hpux-hpvm-docs.
7.2 Dependencies and prerequisites
The NPIV functionality requires a hardware I/O stack, which explicitly supports NPIV from the
HBAs through the interconnect modules and SAN fabric. NPIV is supported with Emulex, Qlogic
FC cards, and Emulex CNA cards. For more information about supported HBAs, see HP-UX vPars
and Integrity VM V6.3 Release Notes at http://www.hp.com/go/hpux-hpvm-docs.
NOTE: NPIV is supported only with fabric topologies. It is not supported with arbitrated loop
topologies where a FC host port is directly connected to the end device target port. You can use
the fcmsutil command to determine whether the FC port is configured with fabric topology:
# /opt/fcms/bin/fcmsutil /dev/fcd0 | grep “Topology”
Topology = PTTOPT_FABRIC
7.1 Benefits of NPIV 101