NPIV implementation requirements

To enable NPIV, ensure that the following hardware and software requirements are met.

• Switches: NPIV must be supported on the switch that is connected to the HBA.
• Host Bus Adapters: HBAs must support NPIV. The following HBA vendors and models are supported:
  • Brocade: Any 4 Gbit/sec or 8 Gbit/sec HBA
  • Emulex: 4Gbit/sec HBA running firmware level 2.70a5 or later. All Emulex 8 Gbit/sec HBAs running firmware 1.00a9 or later.
  • QLogic: Any 4 Gbit/sec or 8 Gbit/sec HBA
• Storage: Because NPIV is not apparent to storage arrays, no specific support is required.
• NPIV can be used only with Raw Device Mapping (RDM) disks. VMFS disks do not support NPIV. To implement NPIV, the physical HBAs port WWN on an ESX(i) Server host must have access to all LUNs that are to be accessed by virtual machines.
  Note: NPIV is not necessary for RDM configuration.
• If you deploy a virtual machine from a template or a clone, the new virtual machine does not retain the WWN.