Ever been confronted with wanting to setup a new AIX partition that is to boot from NPIV and the SAN guy asks you to activate the port. You may have done it with a physical HBA before, and all that was needed was to start the partition in SMS mode and the SAN "person" could go to work. With NPIV it is different - unfortunately.

VIOS

First, do not forget to use vfcmap -vadapter vfchostX -fcp fcsX to connect the virtual HBA (aka NPIV) to the SAN fabrics. Then, create a seperate profile (I prefer a separate one, it is optional actually) and boot the partition to the openfirmware prompt.

SMS openfirmware

When you see 0> enter ioinfo and in the next menu select fcinfo. From there you can select your virtual adapters and that activates them into the fabric. Call the SAN person an tell him the first, second, etc adapter is ready and to call when he needs the next one.

Active Partition

Remember, if your partition is already bootable once the partition is up (and/or DRA - Dynamic Resource Allocation (was DLPAR)) and cfgmgr has been run the virtual interface is visible in the SAN fabric.