15Administering Npiv; About Npiv; Enabling And Disabling Npiv; Configuring Npiv - HP A7533A - Brocade 4Gb SAN Switch Base Administrator's Manual

15 Administering NPIV
This chapter describes the concepts and procedures for administering N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV).

About NPIV

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
impacting 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.
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.

Enabling and disabling NPIV

The SAN Switch 4/32, SAN Switch 4/32B, 4/64 SAN Switch NPIV is enabled for every port.
NOTE: Director blade FC10-6 does not support NPIV.
To enable or disable NPIV on a port-by-port basis, enter the portCfgNPIVPort command.
The following example shows NPIV being enabled on port 10 of a SAN Switch 4/32:
switch:admin> portCfgNPIVPort 10, 1

Configuring NPIV

To specify the number of virtual N_Port_IDs per port or per switch, use the configure command with
either of the following parameters:
•
switch.login.perPortMax
Use this parameter to set the number of virtual N_Port_IDs per port to a value between 0 and 255. The
default setting is 126.
For the 4/256 SAN Director with an FC4-48 or the DC SAN Backbone Director (short
name, DC Director) with an FC8-48 port blade: For ports 0 through 15 on the FC4-48 and
FC8-48 port blade, the maximum number of virtual N_Port_IDs per port is 255; for ports 16 through
47, the maximum number is 127.
•
switch.login.perSwitchMax
Use this parameter to set the number of virtual N_Port_IDs per switch to a value between 0 and 126
multiplied by the <number of ports>. The default setting is 15 multiplied by the <number of
ports>.
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