Understanding Virtual Fibre Channel
While iSCSI provided a method to enable shared storage within virtual machines,
many organizations did not use iSCSI and instead relied on Fibre Channel to access
their SAN environments. These organizations wanted to enable virtual machines to be
able to access the SAN directly using the host’s Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA,
basically similar to a network card but used to connect to storage fabric with
technologies to enable very fast and efficient movement of data).
Windows Server 2012 introduced virtual Fibre Channel to allow virtual machines to
connect directly to storage on a Fibre Channel–connected SAN whose architecture is
like that shown in Figure 4.11. The architecture is similar in structure to how
networking works with Hyper-V.
Notice in Figure 4.19 that on the Hyper-V host one or more virtual SANs are created,
and they connect to one or more HBAs on the Hyper-V host. The key is to not
introduce a single point of failure, so multiple virtual SANs are connected to various
HBAs that connect to numerous physical switches; and then within the virtual
machines are multiple virtual adapters, each connecting to a different virtual SAN.
Figure 4.19 Using virtual Fibre Channel with Hyper-V
To use virtual Fibre Channel, the HBA must support and be enabled for N_Port ID
Virtualization (NPIV), which allows virtual port IDs to share a single physical port. If
your HBA does not support NPIV, or NPIV is not enabled, this will be shown when you
are trying to create a virtual SAN, as shown in Figure 4.20.