SWXCR CONTROLLERS

[geeta]

What are SWXCR controllers?,How do I save the configuration on SWXCR controllers, where is it saved?

Appreciated:) anybody who can explain in simple terms, am new to all this

[Hein van den Heuvel · Accepted solution]

From memory...

A SWXCR is a PCI backplane RAID controller made by the Mylex corporation. The Digital/Compaq/HP partnumber for is is KZPSC. Nicknamed Pluto or Astro for the older, slower KZPSE EISA model.

It has a PCI bus on the cpu side, and 3 scsi busses on the other side which are connected to internal or external drives.
The controller has modest smarts, and memory (for example 64MB battery backed-up cache) and presents 'LOGICAL DRIVES' to the Operating system. Under Tru64 those show up as "re...".
Those logical drives are 'carved' from GROUPS through a management program (RCU) where you select the size and raid level (0 for stripe, 1 for mirror, raid-5 and so on), chunk size and write back caching attributes.
The groups are build up from the physical drives.

The controller was relatively inexpensive and powerful 10 years ago, but nowadays it is considered limited, notbably with respect to the drive sizes.

Google around for more details ?!
Come back if you have a specific question to be answerred.

HTH,
Hein.

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

they go by the name mylex controller for me.
The newer ones are the KZPAC with one or three channels. It is supported under 5.X.
Hein is right with the limitation. It supports only 9GB disks and the logical drive size is also rather small.
The normal way is to shutdown the machine, run the ra230rcu configuration program from diskette or from cdrom. That allows you to configure disks and save the configuration. Then there is the Storage Works Console and the older swxcrmgr which let you also do some configuring.
Documentation and software can be found here:
http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/products/storage/retired/ra230/index.html

greetings,

Michael

[Vladimir Fabecic]

If something is not supported, it does not mean it is not working.
I have KZPAC working with 18GB disks for years with no problem.
But logical drive size limit is small. I use mirror sets of two 18GB disks and it works OK.

[geeta]

Hein and Michael , thanx a ton :)

Now heres the question, we are being trained on these ones: KZPAA/KZPBA/KZPBC/KZPCA/KZPCM/KZPDM/KZPDA/
KZPDC/KZPEA/KZPSA/KZPSC/KZPSM- "Are all of these SWXCR controllers?"

I know this is all retro stuff, but if I can have my basics clear, would help

Once again, thanx for the explanation guys!
Helped :)

[geeta]

Also now tht we are talking about controllers, whats the difference between SWCC and SMOR and whn is either one of them used?


Thanx :)

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

you will find a lot with google on any of these controllers.
SWCC or the Storage Works Command Console is a software to remotely access different controllers and also locally via serial cable. It can also be used to update the firmware. smor is an offline configuration utility.

Michael

[geeta]

Thanx again :)

Heres a lab scenario tht we had , however I am not really clear on the explanation tht we were given. If anyone could explain this, would be greatly appreciated:)

" A customer has a SWXCR JBOD drive fail. The drive was 2 GB in size and was replaced by a 4 GB drive. All the data was lost but the customer has a good backup. However, he can only see 2 GB from the OS level after he replaced the drive. He believes he should see 4 GB. How can this be explained? His configuration consists of 7 JBOD disks labeled DRA0 through DRA6 in a single shelf. The drive tht failed was DRA2. Is there a way to get DRA2 to allow access to the 4GB?"

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

that is easy. The mylex controller has a 2GB in its configuration as JBOD. You have to delete that old disk in the configuration and reformat the new disk to gain access to the full 4GB.

greetings,

Michael

[geeta]

U r the man !

Thanx again!! :)