My Oracle Support Banner

How to Configure FC HBA NPIV With VSAN / VHBA on Guest LDom (Doc ID 2108444.1)

Last updated on DECEMBER 04, 2023

Applies to:

SPARC T4-2 - Version All Versions and later
Solaris Operating System - Version 11.3 and later
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Goal

  

Note: Unless source and destination devices support direct-connect NPIV, a NPIV capable FC Switch is usually required between the FC HBA and the storage device.

 
 

The objective of this document is to show how we can use NPIV feature on a Control Domain, in combination with new feature VSAN/VHBA available on Solaris 11.3 or greater.

VSAN (primary or IO domain)◄▬▬▬▬▬▬▬► VHBA (guest)

About VHBA and VSAN , see this nice blog:
Virtual HBA in Oracle VM Server for SPARC

Implementing VHBA
It requires Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.3, which is delivered with Oracle Solaris 11.3 in the control domain.
The guest domains using VHBA must run Solaris 11.3, as Solaris 10 does not have the SCSA interface described above.
There are no special hardware requirements other than having a physical HBA with LUNs.
It runs on any supported SPARC server - in this example on a SPARC T2.

Oracle® VM Server for SPARC 3.3 Release Notes
--> "Virtual SCSI HBA, which requires the Oracle Solaris 11.3 OS"

Solaris 11.3 provides Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.3 , documentation is available here:
Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.3 Documentation Library
--> see Chapter 11 "UsingVirtual SCSI Host Bus Adapters" of the "Oracle®VMServer for SPARC 3.3 Administration Guide"

About NPIV , see this document as a example:
How to enable NPIV - Oracle Emulex FC HBA : fcinfo shows NPIV Not Supported (Doc ID 1609077.1)

 

In this document : we will create and use a NPIV ports on a FC HBA to present different devices or LUNs on each WWN port:

1. Only a single tape device to a guest domain guest01, so the guest domain can do backup directly through the SAN, using VSAN / VHBA

For a guest domain, there are several ways to do this:
- assign the FC HBA via Direct IO to the guest domain

- create FC SR-IOV VFs and assign to the guest domain ,see:
How to Create and Assign FC SR-IOV Virtual Functions (VFs) on an Emulex FC HBA (Doc ID 1999091.1)

- assign virtual FC HBA as VSAN (new in Solaris 11.3) to the guest domain, see also this doc:
LUNs Not Recognized on a Guest LDOM Using VHBAs. (Doc ID 2093753.1)

 

2. A group of LUNs /Disk devices can also be created using different VSAN
 

 

Solution

To view full details, sign in with your My Oracle Support account.

Don't have a My Oracle Support account? Click to get started!

In this Document
Goal
Solution
References


My Oracle Support provides customers with access to over a million knowledge articles and a vibrant support community of peers and Oracle experts.