The virtual Fibre Channel feature in Hyper-V makes it possible for a virtual machine to connect directly to a SAN through a virtualized Fibre Channel adapter. Establishing connectivity to your SAN by using a virtual Fibre Channel adapter is a two-step process.
You can configure as many as four virtual Fibre Channel adapters on a virtual machine and associate each one with a virtual SAN. Each virtual Fibre Channel adapter connects with one WWN address or two WWN addresses to support live migration. You can set each WWN address automatically or manually. Tape library support
On the Hyper-V Managerscreen, click the name of the desired virtual machine under Virtual Machines. In the Actionpane, click Settings. Under Add Hardware, you will see a list of hardware options that you can add to your virtual machine. Click Fibre Channel Adapter, and then click Add.
The virtual Fibre Channel feature has the following prerequisites: A computer with one or more Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) converged network adapters. These devices must use updated drivers that support virtual Fibre Channel.
I followed this wonderful resource to enable Fibre Channel support within FreeNAS, even though I realize Fibre Channel isn't officially supported in FreeNAS.. My intention is to link this FreeNAS server to a Windows 2019 Server purely as a backup storage device, and in each of the FreeNAS and Windows servers, I have a QLogic QLE2672 card with 2x 8G fibre connections, both of which are direct ...
It's been several years since I have done anything with Hyper-V. I know you can do HA/failover with Hyper-V and shared storage, but can you do the same using servers with only local storage, i.e. something like VSA or vSAN?
Hyper-V calls the HBA driver to create a virtual port. A physical port is assigned to the virtual SAN is performed using a round robin scheme. If a virtual port fails to be brought online using the assigned physical port, another physical port will be will be attempted.
Ensure that an SMI-S provider is installed. VMM manages fibre channel fabrics and SAN devices using the SMI-S provider. Remember not to install the SMI-S provider on the VMM server, but on a server that the VMM server can connect to with an FQDN or IP address.
I'm new to Fibre Channel so please take that into consideration. We have 3 servers. 2 servers are running Hyper-V and 3rd server was bought to act as a file/backup server for those 2 servers. All servers are running Windows 2012 STD.. Steps I've done:
Virtual Fibre Channel for Hyper-V provides the guest operating system with unmediated access to a SAN by using a standard World Wide Name (WWN) associated with a virtual machine. Hyper-V users can now use Fibre Channel SANs to virtualize workloads that require direct access to SAN logical unit numbers (LUNs). Fibre Channel SANs also allow you to operate in new scenarios, such as running the Failover Clustering feature inside the guest operating system of a virtual machine connected to shared Fibre Channel storage.
Hyper-V allows you to define virtual SANs on the host to accommodate scenarios where a single Hyper-V host is connected to different SANs through multiple Fibre Channel ports. A virtual SAN defines a named group of physical Fibre Channel ports that are connected to the same physical SAN. For example, assume that a Hyper-V host is connected to two SANs—a production SAN and a test SAN. The host is connected to each SAN through two physical Fibre Channel ports. In this example, you might configure two virtual SANs—one named “Production SAN” that has the two physical Fibre Channel ports connected to the production SAN and one named “Test SAN” that has two physical Fibre Channel ports connected to the test SAN. You can use the same technique to name two separate paths to a single storage target.
Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 can use the multipath I/O (MPIO) functionality to ensure continuous connectivity to Fibre Channel storage from within a virtual machine. You can use MPIO functionality with Fibre Channel in the following ways:
When the virtual machine stops running on the host, the NPIV port is removed. Due to the use of NPIV, the HBA ports used for virtual Fibre Channel should be set up in a Fibre Channel topology that supports NPIV, and the SAN should support NPIV ports.
Hyper-V requires a computer with processor support for hardware virtualization. A computer with one or more Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) that have an updated HBA driver that supports virtual Fibre Channel. Updated HBA drivers are included with the in-box HBA drivers for some models.
The HBA ports to be used with virtual Fibre Channel should be set up in a Fibre Channel topology that supports NPIV, a maximum transfer size of at least 0.5MB, and data transfers of at least 128 physical pages. To determine whether your hardware supports virtual Fibre Channel, contact your hardware vendor or OEM.
You can use MPIO functionality with Fibre Channel in the following ways: Use MPIO for host access. Install multiple Fibre Channel ports on the host, and use MPIO to provide highly available connectivity to the LUNs accessible by the host. Virtualize workloads that use MPIO.
Zones are used to connect a fibre channel array to a host or virtual machine (VM). The storage array target ports are mapped to the HBA ports on the host or to the virtual HBA (vHBA) ports for the VM. You can create zones for a host, a VM, or both.
You can view the zonesets for a fabric in Fabric > Fibre Channel Fabric > Name , right-click the applicable fabric > Properties > Zonesets.
vHBAs are used by VMs to connect with vSANs. In order for vHBAs to connect to vSANs, they first must be added to the hardware profile of a VM template.
Hyper-V hosts must be running at least Windows Server 2012. Ensure that an SMI-S provider is installed. VMM manages fibre channel fabrics and SAN devices using the SMI-S provider. Remember not to install the SMI-S provider on the VMM server, but on a server that the VMM server can connect to with an FQDN or IP address.
A vSAN can only contain HBAs from a single fabric. Storage arrays, switches, and HBAs must have the latest firmware and drivers installed. Make sure that storage arrays can present logical units (LUs). Enable NPIV on fibre channel switches and HBAs. Hyper-V hosts must be running at least Windows Server 2012.
You can create vSANs and assign HBAs to it. One or more vSANs can be created for each host computer. Each vSAN can only contain HBAs that are from the same fabric.
To add a virtual Fibre Channel adapter and connect it to a vSAN. On the Windows Start screen, click Server Manager. Click Tools, and then click Hyper-V Manager. On the Hyper-V Manager screen, click the name of the desired virtual machine under Virtual Machines. In the Action pane, click Settings.
MPIO on the server running Hyper-V You can install multiple virtual Fibre Channel ports on the server running Hyper-V, and then use MPIO to provide high availability to the LUNs that are accessible by the server.
To create a virtual SAN. On the Windows Start screen, click Server Manager. Click Tools, and then click Hyper-V Manager. In the Action pane, click Virtual SAN Manager. To create a new vSAN, click Create. In the Name text box, type the name for your new vSAN.