Virtual fibre channel in Hyper V (original) (raw)

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