Brocade Fabric OS Administrator's Guide Supporting Fabric OS v6.3.0 (53-1001336-02, November 2009)

292 Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide
53-1001336-02
Enabling and disabling NPIV
13
Enabling and disabling NPIV
On the Brocade 300, 4100, 4900, 5000, 5100, and 5300 switches, the Brocade 5410, 5424,
5450, 5480 embedded switches, the Brocade 48000 director, the Brocade DCX and DCX-4S
enterprise-class platforms, and the FA4-18 blade, NPIV is enabled for every port.
NOTE
The FC10-6 port blade and the CEE ports on the Brocade 8000 do not support NPIV.
1. Connect to the switch and log in using an account assigned to the admin role.
2. 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 Brocade 5100:
switch:admin> portCfgNPIVPort 10, 1
NOTE
If the NPIV feature is disabled, the port is toggled if NPIV devices are logged in from that F_Port (a
true NPIV port). Otherwise the firmware considers that port as an F_Port even though the NPIV
feature was enabled.
Configuring NPIV
The actual number of virtual N_Port_IDs accepted per port and per switch is determined by the
limits you set, and also by the limit that is reached first.
For example, if you have set Maximum logins per port parameter to 25, and Maximum logins per
switch parameter to 100, then the first four ports with NPIV enabled, will accept up to 25 virtual
N_Port_IDs each. However, the fifth port will reject any more virtual N_Port_IDs because the
switch.login.perSwitchMax parameter (100) has been reached.
If you set Maximum logins per port parameter to 50, and switch.login.perSwitchMax to 25, then
the first port requests 50 virtual N_Port_IDs; 25 are accepted, and 25 are rejected. The second
port with NPIV enabled requests 50 virtual N_Port_IDs, but none are accepted, because the
Maximum logins per switch parameter limit of 25 has been reached.
To specify the number of virtual N_Port_IDs per port or per switch, use the configure command with
either of the following parameters:
• Maximum logins per port
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 Brocade 48000 director with an FC4-48 port blade or the Brocade DCX or DCX-4S
Backbone with an FC8-48 port blade: For ports 0 through 15 on the FC4-48 and FC8-48 port
blades, the maximum number of virtual N_Port_IDs per port is 255; for ports 16 through 47,
the maximum number is 127.
NOTE
The stated maximum is restricted to the addressing mode used. For more information on
addressing modes, refer to “NPIV overview” on page 291.
• Maximum logins per switch