HP Integrity VM 4.3 N-Port ID Virtualization - A brief overview

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4. Sometimes, a virtual HBA will be stuck in the “INITIALIZING” state. One reason is if the same NPIV WWN is
assigned to VMs on different hosts connected to the same Fibre Channel switch, only the first NPIV HBA will be
online. All the other virtual HBAs with the same WWN will be stuck in the “INITIALIZING” state. This is because
when you start the VM, it will create a vHBA with the port and node WWNs specified when the VM was created
or modified. The initial state will be “INITIALIZING”. While it is in this state, the NPIV HBA will attempt to login to
the FC switch. If the login succeeds, the state will change to “ONLINE”. If another NPIV HBA has already logged
in with the same port WWN, the switch will deny this login and the NPIV HBA will remain in the INITIALIZING
state and no LUNs will be discovered.
To fix this problem (assuming that it is caused by duplicate WWNs, rather than other configuration issues), shut down
the VM and determine which hosts are using the offending WWN. In a single FC switch configuration, the WWN can
be determined by running fcmsutil on the host on the physical FC port(s) associated with the bad NPIV HBA:
# /opt/fcms/bin/fcmsutil /dev/fcd0 npiv_info
PFC Hardware Path = 0/0/0/5/0/0/0
PFC DSF = /dev/fcd0
PFC Class Instance = 0
PFC Driver state = ONLINE
PFC Port WWN = 0x5001438001459910
PFC Node WWN = 0x5001438001459911
PFC Switch Port WWN = 0x201400051ef06bd3
PFC Switch Node WWN = 0x100000051ef06bd3
FlexFC Virtual Fibre Channel (VFC)
----------------------------------
Maximum Supported FlexFC VFC = 16
Number Active FlexFC VFC = 0
HPVM Virtual Fibre Channel (VFC)
----------------------------------
Maximum Supported HPVM VFC = 16
Number Active HPVM VFC = 2
The following provides the list of VFC(s) associated with this PFC:
Type = HPVM VFC
VFC Index = 17
VFC Guest ID = 0x2
VFC Port WWN = 0x50014c2000000002
VFC Node WWN = 0x50014c2800000002
VFC Driver state = INITIALIZING
VFC DSF = /dev/fcd2
VFC Class Instance = 2
Type = HPVM VFC
VFC Index = 18
VFC Guest ID = 0x3
VFC Port WWN = 0x50014c2000000007
VFC Node WWN = 0x50014c2800000007
VFC Driver state = ONLINE
VFC DSF = /dev/fcd3
VFC Class Instance = 3
In this output, the overused port WWN is 0x50014c2000000002. Then, on the other hosts connected to the same
FC switch, run the same fcmsutil command until you find the same value. The vPar number, seen in the ”VFC Guest
ID“ field, is 2 (the value is displayed in hexadecimal). Once that has been done, determine which host needs to
modify a virtual environment by deleting the existing NPIV HBA and creating a new one with an unused WWN.