TL FiberChannel card on a K370

[Don Mallory]

Hi there,

I'm looking for some help on an odd issue.

I have a K370 an an A6685A TachLite FiberChannel card and we want them to work together.

Since there is an issue with using the HSC slots on the core I/O board, we purchased an HSC I/O board (A3641) to put the FC card in.

This is the second TC card, as the first one was determined to be bad by HP hardware support.

When the card and HSC Expansion I/O are installed with the fiber attached (which goes to a Brocade Fiber Switch and on to an HP VA 7410, which is also connected to 5 other servers, one of which being a K370, with the same HSC Exp. I/O and FC Card), the server boots to an INIT CC03 error.

Easy enough, it's a problem with CPU3, so we pulled CPU3, INIT CC02 is the error, okay, easy enough, pull CPU2, INIT CC01 error. Well, you get the idea.

So we tried booting without the fiber attached to the back of the FC card, this got us to a login prompt, an ioscan shows the device as there, software state is CLAIMED, however there is no associated device file. rm the device file, insf -e, gets you nowhere. A reboot, still nada. (note, the bad FC card that was replaced didn't get this far)

The drivers are installed and all show as configured (swlist -l fileset -a state | grep -v -i "TL").

Driver versions are B.11.00.10 for all of them.

The hardware path to the HSC Exp. I/O is 8, to the slot is 8/8 to the FC card is 8/8/1/0.

Okay, plug in the fiber, no problems, ioscan hangs, a reboot was required.

We haven't tried a replacement HSC Expansion I/O.
We don't plan on booting off of a device on the SAN.

System firmware is 39.43. We have 42.01 ready to go if need be, however the documentation from the firmware (cbhk4201.text) says you don't need it.

Checking back with the other K370, which is up and working, it has an older firmware rev.

The client only allows us for a 2 hour downtime every 3 or 4 weeks, but we are in the unique position of having a datacentre shutdown in under 2 weeks where we will have 2.5 days.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Robert_Jewell]

Have you looked at the following patch:

Patch Name: PHKL_28004

Patch Description: s700_800 11.00 Fibre Channel Mass Storage Driver Patch


There are bug fixes that describe hangs and race conditions. However the fact that you say you have a server running ok, may lead me to believe that there is indeed a hardware problem.

-Bob

[Mike Fisher_5]

Don:

A3641 - is that a typo?
I ask because A3696A is the part number I have for the K370 HP-HSC I/O expansion slot upgrade

Regards
Mike

[Angus Crome]

OK, I don't know if this pertains or not, but we ran into the exact same issue putting an A6685A into an K460. The error codes just kept backing up as we removed hardware. I ended up getting HP involved, and had to replace the Expansion Card. In our case, the firmware v41.33, turned on some previously unused chip and it blew. Can't remember what it was called though.

Anyway, once the new Expansion HSC Card was in place, everything started working fine.

Also, although not supported by HP, if your performance needs are not too great, you can use that card in the Core I/O HSC expansion slot. The max throughput is about 60% of what it is on the HSC expansion bus.

I would recommend applying the new firmware before HP replaces your board. The 41.33 aide d the boot time of our K460 by about 15 minutes. It also seems to have made a lot of EMS notifications disappear from diagnostics.

[Don Mallory]

Thanks for the all the comments!

Robert, we have PHKL_23939 installed (as well as PHKL_21834, PHKL_20207, PHKL_19416 and PHNE_15537). It looks like PHKL_28004 supersedes PHKL_23939. I'll give that a try.

Mike, no, A3641 is no a typo, specifically it's A3641-60013, which apparently can be replaced with A3641-69013. This is the 2 port HSC I/O expansion. I believe A3696 is the 4 slot (which we were told by HP Support that it is only supposed to be used on K570's) It's interesting to know that you have one that is working.

Angus, that's the direction I was tending to go and great to hear that someone else had a similar issue.

We're on the prowl of our vendors for an HSC for less than $7100CAD, hopefully we will find one before our downtime. There are a couple of difficulties with using the core I/O HSC slot. In the other K370 we have with the same setup, we found that with the FC in the core I/O HSC slot, it would not acknowledge the array as an array, but as a single disk, this was solved by adding the HSC Expansion I/O board.

I have firmware 42.01 ready to go if need be, but would rather hold off unless absolutely necessary.

Thanks again!
Don

[Angus Crome · Accepted solution]

Don, both my K460's have 4-port HSC expansion cards in them (and I have a spare). I believe the reference to only using the 4-port in the K570 was due to HP-UX 10.00. I believe they had to make a special driver for it, which did not support anything but the Higher-End K's. One of these machines is still running 10.20 for retired/legacy stuff and the 3404 Fibre Cards work fine in them. I do think there is a throughput limitation though, if you put more than one Gigabit (anything) in the expansion slots. From HP's standpoint, they are supported on other K's, since they installed them and have had them on our support contracts for 6+ years.

[Don Mallory]

Just to let everyone know, it was a combination of a few things:

Replacement A6685A TL card
Replacement HSC I/O card
Replacement fiber cable (someone stepped on it and crimped it)

Install the following: (the top one was the clincher for us)
PHKL_24187 - ioscan performance gain for SCSI Subsystem
PHKL_27729 - s700_800 11.00 ioscan -u incorrect display
PHKL_28766 - s700_800 11.00 Probe,IDDS,PM,VM,PA
8700,AIO,T600,FS,PDC,CLK
PKCO_23818 - s700_800 11.00 ioscan(1M) cumulative patch