Assigning the virtual Fibre Channel adapter to a physical Fibre Channel adapter

To enable N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) on managed systems, connect the virtual Fibre Channel adapter on the Virtual I/O Server logical partition to a physical port on a physical Fibre Channel adapter.

Before you start, verify that the following statements are true:

Verify that you have created the virtual Fibre Channel adapters on the Virtual I/O Server logical partition and associated them with virtual Fibre Channel adapters on the client logical partition.
Verify that you have created the virtual Fibre Channel adapters on each client logical partition and associated them with a virtual Fibre Channel adapter on the Virtual I/O Server logical partition.

After the virtual Fibre Channel adapters are created, you need to connect the virtual Fibre Channel adapter on the Virtual I/O Server logical partition to the physical ports of the physical Fibre Channel adapter. The physical Fibre Channel adapter should be connected to the physical storage that you want the associated client logical partition to access.

Tip: If you are using the HMC, Version 7 Release 3.4.2 or later, you can use the HMC graphical interface to assign the virtual Fibre Channel adapter on a Virtual I/O Server to a physical Fibre Channel adapter.

To assign the virtual Fibre Channel adapter to a physical port on a physical Fibre Channel adapter, complete the following steps from the Virtual I/O Server command-line interface:

Use the lsnports command to display information for the available number of NPIV ports and available worldwide port names (WWPNs). For example, running lsnports returns results similar to the following:

Name      Physloc                    fabric    tports    aports    swwpns    awwpns
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
fcs0     U789D.001.DQDMLWV-P1-C1-T1  1         64        64         2048     2047
fcs1     U787A.001.DPM0WVZ-P1-C1-T2  1         63        62         504      496

Note: If there are no NPIV ports in the Virtual I/O Server logical partition, the error code E_NO_NPIV_PORTS(62) is displayed.

To connect the virtual Fibre Channel adapter on the Virtual I/O Server logical partition to a physical port on a physical Fibre Channel adapter, run the vfcmap command: vfcmap -vadapter virtual Fibre Channel adapter -fcp Fibre Channel port name where:
- Virtual Fibre Channel adapter is the name of the virtual Fibre Channel adapter created on the Virtual I/O Server logical partition.
- Fibre Channel port name is the name of the physical Fibre Channel port.
  Note: If no parameter is specified with the -fcp flag, the command unmaps the virtual Fibre Channel adapter from the physical Fibre Channel port.

Use the lsmap command to display the mapping between virtual host adapters and the physical devices to which they are backed. To list NPIV mapping information, type: lsmap -all -npiv. The system displays a message similar to the following:

Name      Physloc                    ClntID    ClntName  ClntOS
---------------------------------------------------------------
vfchost0  U8203.E4A.HV40026-V1-C12   1         HV-40026   AIX

Status:NOT_LOGGED_IN 
FC name:fcs0 					FC loc code:U789C.001.0607088-P1-C5-T1 
Ports logged in:0 
Flags:1 <not_mapped, not_connected>
VFC client name: 			VFC client DRC:

When you are finished, consider the following tasks:

For each logical partition, verify that both WWPNs are assigned to the same physical storage and have the same level of access on the storage area network (SAN). For instructions, see the IBM® System Storage® SAN Volume Controller.
Note: To determine the WWPNs that are assigned to a logical partition, use the Hardware Management Console (HMC) to view the partition properties or partition profile properties of the client logical partition.
If you later need to remove the connection between the virtual Fibre Channel adapter created on the Virtual I/O Server logical partition and the physical port, you can do so by using the vfcmap command and not specifying a parameter for the -fcp flag.

Last updated: Thu, October 15, 2020