Could not see NPIV enabled VM's vport mapped LUN in Guest OS

[vijayagce]

Hi,

We have configured NPIV enabled environment with SAN storage, SANbox switch and Qlogic HBA card in ESX4.0 Host. In this configuration

1) We can create the vports for VM which is using RDM disk for its os installation

2) We can view the same vports in ESX hosts console while using qlogic scli commands for virtual ports

3) We can see the vports in storage manager as well as switch.

4) We configured the zoning with vports and storage ports as one zone and all ESX hbas and Storage ports are another zone and active the zone set.

5) We have created the host group for the ESX (physical hba) and Windows guest VM (vports) and mapped the LUN to Host group(RDM LUN mapped to ESX host only).

As per our knowledge, everything is fine to work.

But

while trying to list the disk using diskpart cmd in guest OS which is mapped through vports, we couldn't see the disk but we can see it in ESX host(because it mapped to host group).

Could you please give some idea to get out from this issue.

one more thing i would like to know whether vCenter server is must for NPIV configuration(because we didn't use vCenter server but in some documents they told abt vcenter server).

Thanks

Vijaya

[vijayagce]

Hi,

I am not sure abt this but I have refered "www.vmware.com/pdf/esx_lun_security.pdf" some documents from vmware site and knew that NPIV enabled environment with vport mapped lun won't come under guest VM's disk management but we can check the FC traffic with vports. If it is then where can see the vport mapped lun? If vports mapped LUN in ESX server means how can we use the disks mapped to vports? Is there any conditions for vport mapped LUNs to use with single VM which has vports.

Thanks,