topic Re: vSPhere 4.0/4.1 - Possible to vMotion NPIV Storage? in Operating System - VMware

vSPhere 4.0/4.1 - Possible to vMotion NPIV Storage?

Alzhy — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:53:12 GMT

Is this supported now with vSphere 4.0/4.1?

Is there any performance issues or caveats? We want to preserve our storage provisioning gyrations with Virtual Server on vMware as the main reason.

Re: vSPhere 4.0/4.1 - Possible to vMotion NPIV Storage?

Alzhy — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 19:09:43 GMT

http://www.brocade.com/downloads/documents/brocade_vmware_technical_briefs/NPIV_ESX4_0_GA-TB-145-01.pdf

So Yes.

Re: vSPhere 4.0/4.1 - Possible to vMotion NPIV Storage?

Michal Kapalka (mikap) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 19:22:29 GMT

hi,

thank you a great docu.

bookmarked.

mikap

Re: vSPhere 4.0/4.1 - Possible to vMotion NPIV Storage?

Jags_21 — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 09:40:14 GMT

Hi,

Very Informative Doc

Thanks

Re: vSPhere 4.0/4.1 - Possible to vMotion NPIV Storage?

Alzhy — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 19:44:31 GMT

Kind of in a bind here.

I followed the recipe to the letter, generated vport WWNs, pre-zoned the vport WWNs, pre presented a LUN to the vports BUT I can't seem to see the vPort WWNs on the SAN Switch and the LUN does not appear on my Linux guest..

Should it be that my Virtual Machine needs to be on an RDM? Meaning -- it's OS also needs to be on a LUN that is RDM'd (simple RDM)?

Re: vSPhere 4.0/4.1 - Possible to vMotion NPIV Storage?

Uwe Zessin — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 07:00:35 GMT

Well, the PDF file says:

"NPIV can be used only with Raw Device Mappings (RDM) disks."

That means you have to present the disk to the ESX WWPNs to be able to configure the RDM *and* present it to the VM's NPIV WWPNs.

Re: vSPhere 4.0/4.1 - Possible to vMotion NPIV Storage?

Alzhy — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 13:31:28 GMT

Uwe,
So does that mean the VM's OS should be on an initial RDM disk? The docus do not seem to clearly indicate IF a VM can be a normal vmdk file based with a dummy RDM just to assign the vPorts.

Anyway - my issue coul likely be since my ESX hosts are on a Blade Infra - C7000, and each host's "FC HBA" is already NPIV based (shares/profiles of the vConnect FC modules) - that I am trying to NPIV over an already NPIV'd ESX host HBA?

Also in the docu, if my ESX hosts are dual HBA'd (A and B fabric) - the generated vPort WWPNs -- it does not mention which HBA will each NPIV tunnel on to facilitate pre-zoning and pre-persenting NPIV'd LUNs?

Puzzling..

Anyways - I am going to try to have a Guest installed on an RDM and go through over the document again.