NPIV Overview

►N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) is a fibre channel industry standard
method for virtualizing a physical fibre channel port.
►NPIV allows one F_Port to be associated with multiple N_Port IDs,
so a physical fibre channel HBA can be shared across multiple guest
operating systems in a virtual environment.
►On POWER, NPIV allows logical partitions (LPARs) to have
dedicated N_Port IDs, giving the OS a unique identity to the SAN,
just as if it had a dedicated physical HBA(s).

NPIV specifics
PowerVM VIOS 2.1 - GA Nov 14
NPIV support now has planned GA of Dec 19
Required software levels
– VIOS Fix Pack 20.1
– AIX 5.3 TL9 SP2
– AIX 6.1 TL2 SP2
– HMC 7.3.4
– FW Ex340_036
– Linux and IBM i planned for 2009
Required HW
– POWER6 520,550,560,570 only at this time, Blade planned for 2009
– 5735 PCIe 8Gb Fibre Channel Adapter
unique WWPN generation (allocated in pairs)***
Each virtual FC HBA has a unique and persistent identity
Compatible with LPM (live partition mobility)
VIOS can support NPIV and vSCSI simultaneously
Each physical NPIV capable FC HBA will support 64 virtual ports
HMC-managed and IVM-managed servers

3. VIOS connect the virtual FC adapter to the physical FC adapter
► With vfcmap
► lsmap –all –npiv
► lsnports shows physical ports supporting NPIV
4. SAN Zoning
To allow the LPAR access to the LUN via the new WWPN
Allow both WWPN and on any Partition Mobility target.

NPIV benefits

►NPIV allows storage administrators to used existing tools
and techniques for storage management
►solutions such as SAN managers, Copy Services, backup /
restore, should work right out of the box
►storage provisioning / ease-of-use
►Zoning / LUN masking
►physical <-> virtual device compatibility
►tape libraries
►SCSI-2 Reserve/Release and SCSI3 Persistent Reserve
– clustered/distributed solutions
►Load balancing (active/active)
►solutions enablement (HA, Oracle,…)
►Storage, multipathing, apps, monitoring…..

NPIV implementation

►Install the correct levels of VIOS, firmware, HMC,8G HBAs,
and NPIV capable/enabled SAN and storage
►Virtual Fibre channel adapters are created via the HMC
►The VIOS owns the server VFC, the client LPAR owns the
client VFC
►Server and Client VFCs are mapped one-to-one with the
vfcmap command in the VIOS
► The POWER hypervisor generates WWPNs based on the range of names
available for use with the prefix in the vital product data on the managed
system.
► The hypervisor does not reuse the WWPNs that are assigned to the virtual
Fibre Channel client adapter on the client logical partition.

Things to consider

WWPN pair is generated EACH time you create a VFC. NEVER is re-created
or re-used. Just like a real HBA.
If you create a new VFC, you get a NEW pair of WWPNs.
Save the partition profile with VFCs in it. Make a copy, don’t delete a profile
with a VFCin it.
Make sure the partition profile is backed up for local and disaster recovery!
Otherwise you’ll have to create new VFCs and map to them during a
recovery.
Target Storage SUBSYSTEM must be zoned and visible from source and
destination systems for LPM to work.
Active/Passive storage controllers must BOTH be in the SAN zone for LPM
to work
Do NOT include the VIOS physical 8G adapter WWPNs in the zone
You should NOT see any NPIV LUNs in the VIOS
Load multi-path code in the client LPAR, NOT in the VIOS
Monitor VIOS CPU and Memory – NPIV impact is unclear to me at this time
No ‘passthru’ tunables in VIOS

NPIV useful commands
vfcmap -vadapter vfchostN -fcp fcsX
► maps the virtual FC to the physical FC port
vfcmap -vadapter vfchostN -fcp
► un-maps the virtual FC from the physical FC port
lsmap –all –npiv
► shows the mapping of virtual and physical adapters and current status
► lsmap –npiv –vadapter vfchostN shows same ofr one VFC
lsdev -dev vfchost*
► lists all available virtual Fibre Channel server adapters
lsdev -dev fcs*
► lists all available physical Fibre Channel server adapters
lsdev –dev fcs* -vpd
► shows all physical FC adapter properties
lsnports
► shows the Fibre Channel adapter NPIV readiness of the adapter and the SAN
switch.
lscfg -vl fcsx
► In A(X client lpar, shows virtual fibre channel properties