Skip to main content

Virtual fibre channel in Hyper V

Virtual fibre channel option in Hyper V allows the connection to pass through from physical  fibre channel HBA to virtual fibre channel HBA, and still have the flexibilities like live migration.

Pre-requisites:

  • VM should be running Windows Server 2008, 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012
  • Supported physical HBA with N_Port Virtualization(NPIV) enabled in the HBA. This can be enabled using any management utility provided by the SAN manufacturer.
  • If you need to enable live migration, each host should be having two physical HBAs and each HBA should have two World Wide Names(WWN). WWN is used to established connectivity to FC storage.When you perform migration, the second node can use the second WWN to connect to the storage and then the first node can release its connection. Thereby the storage connectivity is maintained during live migration
Configuring virtual fibre channel is a two step process

Step 1: Create a Virtual SAN in the Hyper-V host

First you need to click on Virtual SAN manager available on Hyper-V manager,







Select option to create a new Virtual fibre channel SAN , give a name and  select your available physical SAN HBAs .









 Thus the physical SANs are made available to the Virtual machines, but you will still need to add those SANs to your VMs when required . Single host can be connected to multiple SAN Volumes

Step 2: Add the Virtual fibre channel adapter to VM and connect to your SAN

Upto four virtual fibre channel adapters are possible on a VM, however you cannot add virtual fibre channel adapter when VM is switched on.

Right click on your VM-> Settings->New hardware and select Fibre channel adapter and click ok












Select the Virtual SAN that we created in Step 1 and click OK








Now start the VM and use the virtual HBA to connect to the physical SAN storage

What happens during Live migration?

Each Virtual HBA will have two sets of addresses to facilitate live migration.

















Lets find out what exactly happens during a live migration.

Initially the SAN is connected to the VM, it will be using one of the World wide address A to connect to the SAN.
















When we initiate the Live migration, it will start using the second set ie world wide set B.














Thus the  FC connectivity is maintained and once migration is completed connection is flicked over to the second set














This will ensure availability during Live migration


Image courtesy / Ref: http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/ & Techtarget.com

Comments

  1. Hi
    Great article, one doubt. I have a Hyper-v cluster with Windows 2016 Server Datacenter, it has a network team using LACP, this team has the vNic to Live, manager, Heart beat.

    The storage is fiber, each server has two physical HBAs, I need configure a virtual cluster to file server, can I use the Feature NPVI to map LUN to a VM using the existing HBAS or I need a new hba to use this feature?

    thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wait for another five minutes before you begin to wash the hair. If you have heavy or thick hair you have to allow it to sit there for some time. If you apply this product in this manner, then you are going to get the best result. Massage the scalp very well and you have to massage the scalp surrounding. This is because the test is often carried out around that area of the hair. Do not make the mistake of using the same comb which you have always used to brush the hair. You must avoid this to ensure that you do not have any remnant of the old hair in the system again. Body hair grows more slowly than head hair, so it can reveal a long time of drug usage. In this case, they've actually exacerbated their situation. Those who are aware of this occasionally go one step further and eliminate all evidence of follicular growth from their bodies. This is not only painful and time-consuming, but it also raises suspicion levels. Even so, not everything is lost. Blood and urine tests can still indicate recent drug usage in cases like these. Bleaching your hair can indeed help you get rid of pollutants. Additionally, the potency of the substance also affects the rate of detoxification By drinking a detox product you activate the body's natural release system or detoxification process and help hurry THC from your system to help you pass the test

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Windows server 2012: where is my start button??

If you have been using Windows Server OS for a while, the one thing that will strike you most when you login to a Windows server 2012 is that there is no start button!!.. What??..How am I going to manage it?? Microsoft feels that you really dont need a start button, since you can do almost everything from your server  manager or even remotely from your desktop. After all the initial configurations are done, you could also do away with the GUI and go back to server core option.(In server 2012, there is an option to add and remove GUI). So does that mean, you need to learn to live without a start button. Actually no, the start button is very much there .Lets start looking for it. Option 1: There is "charms" bar on the side of your deskop, where you will find a "start" option. You can use the "Windows +C" shortcut to pop out the charms bar Option 2: There is a hidden "start area"in  the bottom left corner of your desktop

Install nested KVM in VMware ESXi 5.1

In this blog, I will explain the steps required to run a nested KVM hypervisor on  Vmware ESXi. The installation of KVM is done on Ubuntu 13.10(64 bit). Note: It is assumed that you have already installed your Ubuntu 13.10 VM in ESXi, and hence we will not look into the Ubuntu installation part. 1) Upgrade VM Hardware version to 9. In my ESXi server, the default VM hardware version was 8. So I had to shutdown my VM and upgrade the Hardware version to 9 to get the KVM hypervisor working. You can right click the VM and select the Upgrade hardware option to do this. 2)In the ESXi host In /etc/vmware edit the 'config' file and add the following setting vhv.enable = "TRUE" 3)Edit the VM settings and go to VM settings > Options  > CPU/MMU Virtualization . Select the Intel EPT option 4) Go to Options->CPUID mask> Advanced-> Level 1, add the following CPU mask level ECX  ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- --H- ---- 5) Open the vmx