By Scott Lowe

Two technologies that seem to have come to the fore recently are NPIV (N_Port ID Virtualization) and NPV (N_Port Virtualization). Judging just by the names, you might think that these two technologies are the same thing. While they are related in some aspects and can be used in a complementary way, they are quite different. What I’d like to do in this post is help explain these two technologies, how they are different, and how they can be used. I hope to follow up in future posts with some hands-on examples of configuring these technologies on various types of equipment.

First, though, I need to cover some basics. This is unnecessary for those of you that are Fibre Channel experts, but for the rest of the world it might be useful [..]