Switch PCI Slot

[Ayman Altounji]

I have a Proliant 2500 running Novell 5.0 SP6a. It originally had a 2SL Raid controller installed in slot 6. The Netware volume was running out of room, so I purchased a SA-221 Raid controller and storage works 4200 expansion box. When I installed it I put it in PCI slot 3. Every thing installed correctly and the Novell volume was expanded. Since then I have learned I should have used slot 4 or 5 to avoid the "bridged PCI" performance decrease. Can I safely simply move the 221 from slot 3 to slot 4 and update the startup to point to slot 4 when the server is powered down? How significant is the performance increase and is it worth worrying about or doing? Any help or comment is greatly appreciated.

[Ayman Altounji]

You should be able to safely move the controller from slot 3 to slot 4, without any problems. However, it is always a good idea and COMPAQ does recommend that before you make any changes to your system that you have a good backup. As far as the performance increase, when moving the controller from a secondary PCI slot to a primary PCI slot could be as much as approximately 5 to 25% increase in (end user and backup)performance.