Glossary Term

NPIV (N_Port ID Virtualization)

A Fibre Channel standard that lets a single physical adapter present multiple virtual ports, each with its own worldwide port name, used by VIOS to share storage adapters across partitions.

Definition

N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) allows one physical Fibre Channel adapter to register multiple virtual N_Ports, each with a distinct worldwide port name, on the same SAN fabric. In an IBM Power environment, VIOS uses NPIV to give each client partition, such as an IBM i partition, its own virtual Fibre Channel identity on a shared physical adapter, so the FlashSystem array on the other end sees each partition as a distinct host.

NPIV support is a full requirement chain: IBM i, VIOS, the physical Fibre Channel adapter, and the SAN switch fabric must all support it. A gap at any one layer breaks the attachment, even when the other three are correctly configured.

Example

A FlashSystem attachment project that confirms IBM i and VIOS software levels but connects through an older SAN switch without NPIV zoning support will still fail to bring up the virtual Fibre Channel paths.