Adding an Ethernet Adapter

[Hakeem Mohamed]

Hello all,

I'm in the process of migrating several VAXen over to a CHARON emulator based setup with a 2 node cluster. The original machines each only had one SEGC adapter, but it has been decided that we would like to have two ethernet adapters on each machine (one would handle cluster traffic and connect to an isolated router, the other would connect to our LAN and handle all other traffic).

Our software setup is VMS 6.2 and UCX 4.2 ECO 5. I've added a DEQNA adapter and used UCX$CONFIG to set it up, but it doesn't seem to be properly identified in VMS or enabled in UCX.

Using
>>>sho dev

I get
Ethernet Adapter 0 (774440)
-XQA0 (AA-00-04-00-01-05)

So it appears that the system knows the adapter is there. In VMS if I do
$sho dev x /full

I get
Device XQA0:, device type unknown, is online, network device, device is a template only.

In UCX a SHOW INTERFACE only shows my SEGC adapter (ZE0) and the Local host interface (LO0). SHOW CONFIG INTERFACE however lists both of those and the DEQNA adapter (QE0) and shows that the DEQNA adapter has it's own IP, network and broadcast mask.

An MCR LANCP SHOW DEVICE shows both EZA0 and XQA0.

As someone fairly new to VAX systems any insight would be of great help.

[Volker Halle]

Mohamed,

welcome to the OpenVMS ITRC forum.

If LANCP shows both devices, you should also be able to configure them in UCX - as you apparently have done. UCX$CONFIG only allows you to configure existing devices. Did you check for error messages issued during UCX$STARTUP ?

If you want one LAN adapter to just handle cluster traffic, you don't need to configure UCX on that adapter. Also note that you need to connect that LAN adapter to a SWITCH, not to a ROUTER. The cluster protocol (SCS) cannot be routed.

Volker.

[Hakeem Mohamed]

Thanks Volker

The only error I see during startup is

%VAXcluster, XQA is NOT SUPPORTED by the cluster software

but I assumed that only had to do with cluster communications over that interface.

As far as the router/switch goes, I seem to have gotten confused on which it is. It's a switch, and we actually have the two nodes clustering fine over it on the SEGC adapters.

Hakeem

[Andy Bustamante]

With a two node cluster, you don't need to connect the interfaces for cluster traffic to a switch or hub. The most reliable connection will be a cross over network cable. No power to fail, firmware to update or other host allowed to broadcast storm the link.


Andy

[Robert Brooks_1 · Accepted solution]

If you've literally added a DEQNA, you may be out of luck. From your posting, it wasn't apparent if the DEQNA was added to the real or the fake VAX, but I'm pretty sure that most
support for the DEQNA controller was largely removed after V5.5-2.

It may be that the above is completely irrelevant if you've added the "controller" to your CHARON-VAX, and that it uses "DEQNA" as a name for a generic Q-bus ethernet controller.

The preferred replacement for the DEQNA is the DELQA.

-- Rob

[Volker Halle]

Mohamed,

I'm assuming, that you put a real (old) DEQNA into the real VAX.

The CHARON-VAX emulator emulates a DELQA

$ ANAL/SYS
SDA> SHOW LAN/FULL/DEV=XQA0
...
Device name XQ_DELQA Device type 33
...

Volker.

[Hakeem Mohamed]

Thanks Rob, I had no idea that DEQNA was deprecated (I guess that's one of the problems of working on a system almost as old as I am). I changed the CHARON-VAX config to use DELQA instead and now everything is working great.

Hakeem

[Hakeem Mohamed]

Andy,

Our reason for using the switch rather than a crossover (which we'd originally planned to use) is because the company that supplied the emulator software said that there could be Windows issues if a crossover was used. The example they gave was that shutting down one of the host machines could cause the other to shutdown.

Hakeem

[Volker Halle]

Hakeem,

if you only activate the CHARON-VAX NDIS5 protocol on that adapter (using the cross-over cable) and enable no other Windows protocols, I can not imagine, how this should cause a problem...

Volker.

[Stanley F Quayle]

> if you only activate the CHARON-VAX NDIS5 protocol on that adapter (using the cross-over cable) and enable no other Windows protocols, I can not imagine, how this should cause a problem...

Quite right. The required procedure in CHARON-VAX is to disable all protocols except the CHARON driver for the adapters that the emulated VAX is to use. And make sure that the CHARON driver is NOT enabled on the adapter(s) that Windows uses.

The recent versions of the CHARON-VAX/XM /XK /XL series includes a network troubleshooting utility which can come in handy.

Although the same DLL is used for both the DEQNA and DELQA, CHARON-VAX sets the correct device type -- that's why clustering wasn't working.

[Shameless Plug Alert(tm) I'm a CHARON-VAX reseller]