Dell 8 Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide - Page 331

Chapter Administering NPIV 13 In this chapter •NPIV overview 291 •Configuring NPIV 293 •Enabling and disabling NPIV 294 •Viewing NPIV port configuration information 294 NPIV overview N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) enables a single Fibre Channel protocol port to appear as multiple, distinct ports, providing separate port identification within the fabric for each operating system image behind the port (as if each operating system image had its own unique physical port). NPIV assigns a different virtual port ID to each Fibre Channel protocol device. NPIV is designed to enable you to allocate virtual addresses without affecting your existing hardware implementation. The virtual port has the same properties as an N_Port, and is therefore capable of registering with all services of the fabric. This chapter does not discuss the Access Gateway feature. For more information on the Access Gateway feature, refer to the Access Gateway Administrator's Guide. Each NPIV device has a unique device PID, Port WWN, and Node WWN, and should act the same as all other physical devices in the fabric; in other words, multiple virtual devices emulated by NPIV appear no different than regular devices connected to a non-NPIV port. The same zoning rules apply to NPIV devices as non-NPIV devices. Zones can be defined by domain,port notation, by WWN zoning, or both. To perform zoning to the granularity of the virtual N_Port IDs, you must use WWN-based zoning. If you are using domain,port zoning for an NPIV port, and all the virtual PIDs associated with the port are included in the zone, then a port login (PLOGI) to a non-existent virtual PID is not blocked by the switch; rather, it is delivered to the device attached to the NPIV port. In cases where the device is not capable of handling such unexpected PLOGIs, you should use WWN-based zoning. The following example shows the number of NPIV devices in the output of the switchShow command. The number of NPIV devices is equal to the sum of the base port plus the number of NPIV public devices. The base port is the N_Port listed in the switchShow output. Based on the formula, index 010000 shows only 1 NPIV device and index 010300 shows 222 NPIV devices. Example of NPIV devices switch:admin> switchshow switchName: 5100 switchType: 71.2 switchState: Online switchMode: Access Gateway Mode switchWwn: 10:00:00:05:1e:41:49:3d switchBeacon: OFF Index Port Address Media Speed State Proto Fabric OS Administrator's Guide 291 53-1001763-02