Does NPIV need to be enabled on all core switches?

[alorentzen]

Does NPIV need to be enabled on all core switches or only those that will be connected to the NPV enabled 9124e blade switches? There are four core switches in each fabric but only one 9513 will connect to the blade switches.

Thanks.

[Nikhil Sharma]

Hello,

Only the switch that is directly connected

to the NPV enabled switches needs to be enabled for NPIV.

NPIV provides a means to assign multiple FC IDs to a single N port which in this case would only be done on a single core MDS 9513 Director. NPV on the other hand, aggregates multiple locally connected N ports into one or more external NP links, which shares the domain ID of the NPIV enabled switch.

Refer to the following for more info:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/mds9000/sw/4_1/configuration/guides/cli_4_1/npv.html

Hope this helps!

Nikhil