N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) is a method for virtualizing a physical Fibre Channel port that is used for host I/O. When NPIV is enabled, ports do not come up until they are ready to service I/O, which improves host behavior around node unpends. In addition, path failures due to an offline node are masked from host multipathing.
The processes for enabling NPIV on a new system and on an existing system are different.