Monday, October 13, 2014

Fibre Channel NPV and NPIV

I'm often asked by customers and colleagues what is the difference between NPV and NPIV. I don't want to write information which are already well written and explain by someone else. So please read this Tony Bourke blog post which is IMHO very well written.

Just quick summary.

NPV is CISCO term doing the same thing like Brocade Access Gateway or DELL Force10 NPG (NPIV Proxy Mode). All these technologies put the Fibre Channel switch in to the mode where they don't have Fibre Channel Domain ID and therefore works like absolutelly transparent Fibre Channel multiplexer or intelligent pass-through if you wish. It significantly simplified SAN architectures and multivendor interoperability.

NPIV is the feature allowing Fibre Channel switch operates more FCIDs over single fibre channel switch port. So it effectively allows aggregation of more Fibre Channel Nodes (N-Port IDs) per single FC link.

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