N-Port ID (NPIV) Virtualization Support on AIX with SF HA 5.1

NPIV and the IBM Virtual I/O Server (VIOS)

NPIV Overview:
 
N_PortID Virtualization (NPIV) is a fibre channel industry standard method for virtualizing a physical fibre channel port.
NPIV allows one F_Port to be associated with multiple N_Port IDs, so a physical fibre channel HBA can be shared across multiple guest operating systems in a virtual environment.
On POWER, NPIV allows logical partitions (LPARs) to have dedicated N_Port IDs, giving the OS a unique identity to the SAN, just as if it had a dedicated physical HBA(s).

NPIV will enable the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) to provision entire dedicated logical ports to client LPAR's rather than individual LUNs. Client partitions with this type of logical port operate as though it has its own dedicated Fibre Channel Protocol adapter(s). This feature was supported in SFHA 5.1(Oakmont).

Requirements:
- Any Power 6 basedmachine.
- SAN Switch & FC Adapters shoud be NPIV capable.
- At least one 8Gb PCI Express Dual Port FC Adapter required.
- Minimum OS-level:
.FW Ex340_036 or later.
.AIX 6.1 TL2 or later
.AIX 5.3 TL9 or later
- VIO Server Version 2.1 with Fix Pack 20.1 or later.
- HMC7.3.4

How to Configure:
- Create client & server VFC adapters using HMC.
- Check whether WWPNs are available from Client partition's virtual adapter properties.
- Map the Virtual FC adapter with Physical FC adapter in VIOS.
- SAN Zoning

Useful Commands:
- lists all available virtual Fibre.
$ lsdev -devvfchost*
name status description
vfchost0 Available Virtual FC ServerAdapter
- lists all available physical Fibre Channel server adapters in theVirtual I/O Server partition.
$ lsdev -devfcs*
name status description
fcs0 Available 4Gb FC PCI Express Adapter(df1000fe)
fcs1 Available 4Gb FC PCI Express Adapter(df1000fe)
fcs2 Available 8Gb PCI Express Dual Port FCAdapter*df1000f114108a03)  <<<<
fcs3 Available 8Gb PCIExpress Dual Port FC Adapter*df1000f114108a03)  <<<<
-command to check the Fibre Channel adapter NPIV readiness of the adapter and theSAN switch.
$ lsnports
name physloc     fabric  tports  aports  swwpns  awwpns
fcs2 U789D.001.DQDYKYW-P1-C6-T2 1 64 63 2048 2046

-shows the mapping of virtual and physical adapters and current status.
$lsmap -all -npiv

Things to consider:
. WWPN pair is generated each time you create a VFC. Never is re-created or re-used. Just like a real HBA.
. If you create a new VFC, you get a NEW pair of WWPNs.
. Target Storage SUBSYSTEM must be zoned and visible from source and destination systems for LPM to work.
. Active/Passive storage controllers must BOTH be zoned in the SAN zone for LPM(Live Partition Mobility).
. Do NOT include the VIOS physical 8G adapter WWPNs in the zone.
. You should NOT see any NPIV LUNs inthe VIOS.
. Load multi-path code in the client LPAR, NOT in the VIOS.
. No'passthru' tunables in VIOS.
. Devices in VIO client appear as regular scsi disks. SF will identify these LUNs on the array properties where LUNs are provisioned from.

Migration from Physical to Virtual Environment:
- We have also qualified migration of storage consumed by SF from physical environment to VIO environment.
- Migration is an offline task. Here are the steps involved.
. Stop all the applications.
. Un-mount all user filesystems.
. Deport the disk group on the physical server
. Make sure all the LUN's are accessible in VIO client through VFC client adapter.
. Import the disk group and mount all user file systems.
. Start the apllications on the VIO client.

NPIV resources:
- Redbooks:
SG24-7590-01 PowerVMVirtualization on IBM Power Systems (Volume 2): Managing andMonitoring
SG24-7460-01 IBM PowerVM Live Partition Mobility
- VIOS latestinfo:
http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/vios/home.html