Deploying NPIV for VMware ESX/ESXi 4.0
QLogic Fibre Channel and Converged Network Adapters support N_Port ID virtualization (NPIV) for Fibre Channel and FCoE SANs. NPIV enables each virtual machine to have its own Fibre
VMware ESX/ESXi 4.0 supports NPIV only on raw device mapping (RDM) devices. To configure NPIV, you must enable NPIV on the Fibre
Fibre Channel SAN Configuration Guide http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_san_cfg.pdf
Configuring and Troubleshooting
Requirements for Using NPIV
The following are required to implement NPIV:
NPIV can only be used for virtual machines with RDM disks. Virtual machines with regular virtual disks use the WWNs of the host’s physical adapters.
The physical adapters on an ESX/ESXi host, using their own WWNs, must have access to all LUNs that are to be accessed by virtual machines running on that host.
Only four WWN pairs are generated per virtual machine.
The switches must support NPIV.
The NPIV LUN number and NPIV target ID must match the physical LUN and Target ID when configuring an NPIV LUN for access at the storage level.
Always use the vSphere client to manage virtual machines with WWNs.
The virtual machine must be powered off to configure it for NPIV.
