In This Chapter; Npiv Overview - Dell PowerEdge M420 Administrator's Manual

NPIV Basic Concepts

In this chapter

NPIV overview

With the FC SAN Module, your Enterprise fabric can handle additional external ports (N_Ports)
instead of domains. You do this by configuring internal ports (F_Ports) to connect to the fabric as
external ports, which increases the number of device ports you can connect to a single fabric.
Because the Dell (Fibre Channel) FC SAN Module functions as an NPIV port aggregator, it is
compatible with Brocade Fabric OS, M-EOS v9.1 or v9.6 and later, and Cisco-based fabrics v3.0 (1)
or later and v3.1 (1) and later. This document describes configurations using the CLI commands.
Since the FC SAN Module operates using NPIV it is logically transparent to the host and the fabric.
You can increase the number of blade servers that have access to the fabric without increasing the
number of switches. This simplifies configuration and management in a large fabric by reducing the
number of domain IDs and ports.
servers (Hosts) and fabrics.
FIGURE 1
Dell 8/4Gbps FC SAN Module Administrator's Guide
53-1001345-01
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NPIV overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
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FC SAN Module port types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
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FC SAN Module limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
FC SAN Module connection
Figure 1 shows how the FC SAN Module connects to blade
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