Thursday, December 8, 2011

NPIV N_Port (Node Port) ID Virtualization

NPIV is a useful Fibre Channel feature which allows a physical HBA (Host BUS Adapter) to have multiple Node Ports. Normally, a physical HBA would have only 1 N_Port ID. The use of NPIV enables you to have multiple unique N_Port ID’s per physical HBA. NPIV can be used by ESX4 to allow more Fibre Channel connections than the maximum physical allowance which is currently 8 HBA’s per Host or 16 HBA Ports per Host.   

NPIV requires supported hardware, incldued HBAs and Switches. With NPIV you could present a LUN to a specific VM. (The case for RDM)

No comments:

Post a Comment