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

• Multipath capability in the VM

With NPIV, the administrator can now add multiple virtual HBA resources and configure each of them to see the same

set of LUNs. This allows for multipathing in the VM, analogous to what can be achieved on standalone systems.

NPIV dependencies and prerequisites

Software dependencies

NPIV support is available for HP Integrity VM 4.3, January 2012 patch release. See the patch release notes at

www.hp.com/go/hpux-hpvm-docs.

Hardware dependencies

This functionality requires a hardware I/O stack, which explicitly supports NPIV from the HBAs, through the

interconnect modules and SAN fabric and on to the individual Fibre Channel devices. The supported HBAs include,

but may not be limited to:

• QLogic QMH2562 8 Gb FB HBA for HP BladeSystem C-Class (451871-B21)

• HP single-port 8 Gb PCIe Fibre Channel HBA (AH400A)

• HP dual-port 8 Gb PCIe Fibre Channel HBA (AH401A)

Supported I/O Interconnect Modules include but may not be limited to:

• HP BLc Virtual Connect 8 Gb 24-Port Fibre Channel Module for c-Class BladeSystem (466482-B21)

• HP BLc Virtual Connect 8 Gb 20-Port Fibre Channel Module for c-Class BladeSystem (572018-B21)

• HP BLc 4 Gb Virtual Connect Fibre Channel Module for c-Class BladeSystem (409513-B22)

For the SAN fabric, please refer to your vendor’s documentation to determine support. HP supports NPIV with its

4 GB and 8 GB SAN switches.

The information provided here represents what was verified at the time of writing. For updated information regarding

supported hardware, please see the HP Integrity VM website at

www.hp.com/go/integrityvm and the latest

HP Integrity VM Release Notes, or contact HP Support.

Verifying that the host can support NPIV

Before creating a vHBA, it is recommended that the administrator check the physical HBAs on the system to verify that

they support NPIV. The fcmsutil command can do this check. Run this command on a host Fibre Channel HBA:

/opt/fcms/bin/fcmsutil /dev/fcdX

where X is the instance number of the Fibre Channel HBA and can be obtained from the “ioscan-kfnC fc”

command on the host:

# ioscan -kfnC fc

Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description

===================================================================

fc 0 0/2/0/0/0/0 fcd CLAIMED INTERFACE HP AH401A 8Gb Dual Port PCIe Fibre Channel Adapter

(FC Port 1)

/dev/fcd0

fc 1 0/2/0/0/0/1 fcd CLAIMED INTERFACE HP AH401A 8Gb Dual Port PCIe Fibre Channel Adapter

(FC Port 2)

/dev/fcd1