FlexFabric 10G & VMWare NPIV

[Puaro]

Hello

I have next configuration:

1. Blade HP 460c g7 с (FW 3.702.453.0)
2. HP VC FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port (FW 3.15)
3. Brocade 8/40 (FW 6.4.1B)
4. VMWare ESXi 4.1

Will VMWare NPIV work (NPIV implemented at the level of the hypervisor VMWare) if the hypervisor runs on the Blade HP 460c G7 is connected to the communications module HP VC FlexFabric 10Gb? Cascading NPIV is supported for this configuration?
Please help with the answer.

[davidbruno]

Puaro,

I assume you have a dual fabric design. By default all Brocade ports come with NPIV enabled, so no issue there. Most current HBAs (Emulex, QLogic, Brocade) support NPIV out of the box but check first.

• Connect the ESX host hba0 to fabric1 (SAN switch1) and hba1 to fabric2 (SAN switch2). Make sure you can "see" both HBAs from the SAN switches
• Each VM guest must be assigned 2 vports (virtual HBAs)
• Any LUN assigned to the VM gust MUST also be masked with the VM host physicall HBA WWNs. The physical HBAs on an ESX Server host must have access to all of the LUNs accessed by VM guests running on the host.
  
• Zone ESX host with disk array port serving storage
• Zone VM guest with disk array port serving storage (use vport port WWN, not node WWN)
• VMs that use NPIV must access storage with Raw Device Mapping (RDM)
  

[Andy_R]

Maybe the FlexFabric cookbook can help:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c02616817/c02616817.pdf

There are some configuration examples for windows and vsphere.

[apt]

I have been trying to do the same following official guides from Vmware and Brocade.

So far no success  and I could not find any information of whether NPIV stacking is supported ot not ...