6.0.1

3 Perform any necessary storage array modication.
Most vendors have vendor-specic documentation for seing up a SAN to work with VMware ESXi.
4 Set up the HBAs for the hosts you have connected to the SAN.
5 Install ESXi on the hosts.
6 Create virtual machines and install guest operating systems.
7 (Optional) Set up your system for VMware HA failover or for using Microsoft Clustering Services.
8 Upgrade or modify your environment as needed.
N-Port ID Virtualization
N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) is an ANSI T11 standard that describes how a single Fibre Channel HBA
port can register with the fabric using several worldwide port names (WWPNs). This allows a fabric-
aached N-port to claim multiple fabric addresses. Each address appears as a unique entity on the Fibre
Channel fabric.
How NPIV-Based LUN Access Works
NPIV enables a single FC HBA port to register several unique WWNs with the fabric, each of which can be
assigned to an individual virtual machine.
SAN objects, such as switches, HBAs, storage devices, or virtual machines can be assigned World Wide
Name (WWN) identiers. WWNs uniquely identify such objects in the Fibre Channel fabric. When virtual
machines have WWN assignments, they use them for all RDM trac, so the LUNs pointed to by any of the
RDMs on the virtual machine must not be masked against its WWNs. When virtual machines do not have
WWN assignments, they access storage LUNs with the WWNs of their host’s physical HBAs. By using
NPIV, however, a SAN administrator can monitor and route storage access on a per virtual machine basis.
The following section describes how this works.
When a virtual machine has a WWN assigned to it, the virtual machine’s conguration le (.vmx) is updated
to include a WWN pair (consisting of a World Wide Port Name, WWPN, and a World Wide Node Name,
WWNN). As that virtual machine is powered on, the VMkernel instantiates a virtual port (VPORT) on the
physical HBA which is used to access the LUN. The VPORT is a virtual HBA that appears to the FC fabric as
a physical HBA, that is, it has its own unique identier, the WWN pair that was assigned to the virtual
machine. Each VPORT is specic to the virtual machine, and the VPORT is destroyed on the host and it no
longer appears to the FC fabric when the virtual machine is powered o. When a virtual machine is
migrated from one host to another, the VPORT is closed on the rst host and opened on the destination host.
If NPIV is enabled, WWN pairs (WWPN & WWNN) are specied for each virtual machine at creation time.
When a virtual machine using NPIV is powered on, it uses each of these WWN pairs in sequence to try to
discover an access path to the storage. The number of VPORTs that are instantiated equals the number of
physical HBAs present on the host. A VPORT is created on each physical HBA that a physical path is found
on. Each physical path is used to determine the virtual path that will be used to access the LUN. Note that
HBAs that are not NPIV-aware are skipped in this discovery process because VPORTs cannot be instantiated
on them.
Requirements for Using NPIV
If you plan to enable NPIV on your virtual machines, you should be aware of certain requirements.
The following requirements exist:
n
NPIV can be used only for virtual machines with RDM disks. Virtual machines with regular virtual
disks use the WWNs of the host’s physical HBAs.
n
HBAs on your host must support NPIV.
Chapter 4 Configuring Fibre Channel Storage
VMware, Inc. 41