Veritas InfoScale™ 7.4.1 Virtualization Guide - AIX
- Section I. Overview
- Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions in AIX PowerVM virtual environments
- Section II. Implementation
- Setting up Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions in AIX PowerVM virtual environments
- Supported configurations for Virtual I/O servers (VIOS) on AIX
- Installing and configuring Storage Foundation and High Availability (SFHA) Solutions in the logical partition (LPAR)
- Installing and configuring Cluster Server for logical partition and application availability
- Supported configurations for Virtual I/O servers (VIOS) on AIX
- Setting up Storage Foundation and High Availability Solutions in AIX PowerVM virtual environments
- Section III. Use cases for AIX PowerVM virtual environments
- Application to spindle visibility
- Simplified storage management in VIOS
- Configuring Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) on Virtual I/O server
- Configuring Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) pseudo devices as virtual SCSI devices
- Extended attributes in VIO client for a virtual SCSI disk
- Virtual machine (logical partition) availability
- Simplified management and high availability for IBM Workload Partitions
- Implementing Storage Foundation support for WPARs
- How Cluster Server (VCS) works with Workload Patitions (WPARs)
- Configuring VCS in WPARs
- High availability and live migration
- Limitations and unsupported LPAR features
- Multi-tier business service support
- Server consolidation
- About IBM Virtual Ethernet
- Using Storage Foundation in the logical partition (LPAR) with virtual SCSI devices
- How DMP handles I/O for vSCSI devices
- Physical to virtual migration (P2V)
- Section IV. Reference
About IBM LPARs with N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV)
N_Port ID Virtualization or NPIV is a Fibre Channel (FC) industry standard technology that allows multiple N_Port IDs to share a single physical N_Port. NPIV provides the capability to take a single physical Fibre Channel HBA port and divide it such that it appears, to both the host and to the SAN, as though there are multiple World Wide Port Names (WWPNs).
NPIV provides direct access to the Fibre Channel adapters from multiple virtual machine (client partitions), simplifying zoning and storage allocation. Resources can be zoned directly to the individual virtual Fibre Channel client ports, each having its own World Wide Port Name (WWPN).
The use of NPIV with IBM VIO provides the capability to use a single Fibre Channel port and overlay multiple WWPNs so that it appears to the SAN as both the VIO server and client partitions have their dedicated Fibre Channel ports. NPIV enables the AIX VIO server to provision entire dedicated logical ports to client LPARs rather than individual LUNs. Client partitions with this type of logical port operates as though the partition has its own dedicated FC protocol adapter. To utilize the NPIV functionality, a new type of virtual Fibre Channel (VFC) adapter is defined on both the VIO and Client. A server VFC adapter can only be created on a VIO server partition; a client VFC adapter can only be created on client partitions. WWPNs are allocated to client VFC adapters when they are defined in the profile, based upon an assignment pool generated from the backing physical adapter.
There is always corresponding one-to-one mapping relationship between VFC adapters on client logical partitions and VFC on the VIOS. That is, each VFC that is assigned to a client logical partition must connect to only one VFC adapter on VIOS, and each VFC on VIOS must connect to only one VFC on the client logical partition.
Characteristics of a LUN through NPIV
To the operating system, multi-pathing drivers and system tools, a LUN presented through NPIV has all the characteristics of a LUN presented through a dedicated HBA. Device inquiry and probing works as with physical HBAs. When a VFC interface is created, two World Wide Port Names (WWPNs) are assigned. This information is available in the HMC as part of the virtual HBA properties.
All SCSI device inquiry operations work, allowing for array identification functions, visibility of LUN Device Identifiers, and discovery of such attributes as thin and thin re-claim capability. SCSI-3 persistent reservation functionality is also supported, enabling the use of SCSI-3 I/O Fencing if the underlying storage supports.
When Zoning/LUN mapping operations occur, care should be taken to ensure that storage is assigned to both WWPNs. During normal operation, only one of the WWPN identifiers is in use, but during a LPAR live migration event, the WWPN identifier not previously used will be configured on the appropriate backing HBA on the target system, log into the SAN, and then become the active WWPN. The previously used WWPN will become inactive until the next Live Partition Mobility operation.
For SFHA Solutions support of NPIV:
See Support for N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) in IBM Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) environments.
For NPIV requirements:
See About setting up logical partitions (LPARs) with Veritas InfoScale products.