Virtual Ports (Npiv) - ATTO Technology Celerity FC-164E Installation And Operation Manual

Virtual Ports (NPIV)

N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) is an extension to
the Fibre Channel industry standard. NPIV allows a
single, physical adapter port to function as multiple
virtual ports (VPorts), each having a unique Fibre
Channel World-Wide-Name in the SAN. This allows
a Storage Administrator to follow SAN best
practices, such as zoning and masking, to control
LUN access on a per-VPort basis.
Support for NPIV is included in the ATTO 8Gb and
16Gb Celerity drivers available for both Windows
and VMware ESX/ESXi. The following sub-sections
contain an overview of the NPIV functionality
provided on each platform.
Default Value
Name
NpivEnable
MaxNpivVPorts
TargetMode
a.The Default Value is the value assigned to the parameter when it is not explicitly defined in the registry.
As mentioned above, NPIV functionality is not
compatible with the existing Target Mode
capabilities of the Windows driver. As such, Target
Mode must be disabled in order for NPIV to be
successfully enabled. Attempting to enable both
Target Mode and NPIV will enable Target Mode, but
disable NPIV, causing a Warning message (Event
ID 32818) to be posted to the Windows Event Log.
36 ATTO Technology Inc. Celerity FC Host Adapters Installation and Operation Manual
a
Range
0 0, non-0
8 1-8
0 0, non-0
1 Windows
Note
NPIV support for Windows is currently
limited to Windows Server 2008 R2 and
Hyper-V R2.
The 8Gb and 16Gb Celerity drivers for Windows
provide NPIV support compatible with Microsoft's
Hyper-V virtualization platform. Each physical port on
the adapter is capable of supporting up to eight virtual
ports. NPIV functionality is disabled by default and
must be enabled via the Windows registry (refer to the
"Registry Settings" section of the readme.html file in
the ATTO install directory for details on modifying HBA
registry parameters). The following registry values are
applicable to NPIV:
Usage
A non-zero value enables the NPIV functionality in the
driver. A zero value disables NPIV.
Sets the maximum number of virtual ports that can be
created on each physical port in the adapter. Setting
this parameter to a value outside the stated range will
cause the driver to revert to the default value (note that
zero is not a valid value).
A non-zero value enables the Target Mode functionality
in the driver. This parameter must be either undefined
or set to zero for the NPIV functionality to be enabled.
For Hyper-V, virtual ports need to be explicitly
created before they can be used by a virtual
machine. The creation and management of virtual
ports is a function of the ATTO Configuration Tool.
Please refer to the ATTO Utilities Installation and
Operation Manual for details on using the
ConfigTool to manage virtual ports.
For additional information about utilizing NPIV in a
Hyper-V environment refer to TechNet topic
"Configuring a SAN Environment for VMM"
(http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/cc764269.aspx).