Qlogic vPorts disappear from SLES 11 SP1 after reboot

[Fearless Freddy]

We are trying to get NPIV going on some new BL460c G6 blades under SLES 11 SP1/Xen 4.xx but finding very little info in the docs and dated info on the web. The blades have the Qlogic 2460 HBA installed and seeing storage from our EVA. Installed the qlogic SanSurfer CLI, used it to generate some vPorts, easy. Now, I can go back intoo the scli and see the vPorts defined but the minute we reboot the server, poof!, they are gone. Not very useable. Now, am I supposed to add a startup script to generate the vPorts on reboot or are they supposed to stick around following a reboot?

I'm also looking for updated infirmation on using the vPorts under Xen 4. I can see the vPort WWNs in the switch, I can define the vHost in the eva, I can present LUNs,  but when I use the following command, I keep getting the following error message.

xm block-attach vhost3 npiv:100000051efafab8bc-50664380056ba29e-50664380056ba29f-50001fe1500c398d-0 xvde w

error: Device 51766 (vbd) could not be connected. /etc/xen/scripts/block failed; error detected.

Create a new virtual block device.

Not much useable info, "error detected", rather vague. Where can I see more detailed info to figure this out?  

Francis....

[Fearless Freddy]

So I will answer my own question, just for posterity. The vPorts seem to go active when first created using the scli utility since they show up nicely in the switch, where you can set up the aliases. However, they seem to go dormant after an OS reboot and will only show up again when you have a VM up and running, using them for disk. Now, I can figure out how to see what vPorts are defined once the server is rebooted so for now, make sure you record the WWPN/WWNN when you define them, PER physical HBA. For whatever reason, this seems to be a very poorly supported technology by the various vendors. I can imagine putting up a large virtualized environment this way.... IMHO....

Francis.....