L2000 PCI SLOTS

[uspfoms]

L2000 HPUX 11.0 adding two new A6795A FC HBA's, I know they need to go in the turbo slots(7-12) but I seem to remember seeing a
HP Doc that stated the A6795A HBA is limited
to slots 3,4,5,6,8,10,12. I've got cards in all turbo slots but can open up 8 and 9.

Question:
Why can't I use slot 9 for the A6795A?

[Adisuria Wangsadinata_1]

Hi,

Is all your slot 3,4,5,6,8,10,12 is occupied already ?

Actually you can try to install the card on slot 9 first. But if something goes wrong, you can refer to the HP docs.

Hope this can help you.

Cheers,
AW

[Stefan Stechemesser · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I think you mean a problem that only very old L2000 servers with the product numbers A5576A and A5191A (the A revisions of the L1000 and L2000) and the older N-Class Servers A3639A and A3639B may have.
It may be that the server crashes in specific situations if a A6795A is installed in specific slots (it may also be that nothing ever happens).
If you have a newer version (A5191B or later) of the L2000, there are no restrictions.
HP indeed decided to support the A6795A only in the following slots in the L2000A :

3,4,5,6,8,10 and 12


If you take a look on the block diagram of the L2000

http://docs.hp.com/en/A5191-96018/ch06s05.html

then you can see, that slots 3-6 are "shared" slots were many cards plug into one PCI bus. Although it is possible to run the cards in these slots, I would expect that the performance will not be optimal then.

If you want the run the card in Slot 9 and have an old L2000A: It may work, but please keep in mind that HP does not support this configuration if you run into problems.

If you need more Fibrechannel cards, then the A6826A PCI-X Dual Channel FC HBA may be a solution. There are no restrictions for this card for all L2000 versions.

best regards

Stefan

[Mahesh Kumar Malik]

Hi

You must install A6795A HBAs in supported slots only. Check for slots availibility in 3,4,5,6,8,10&12

Regards
Mahesh

[uspfoms]

Thanks all, This problem is due to the fact
that we will be installing a new HP SAN but
also must keep the old EMC SAN online until
the data is transfered. From what I see my
only options are slots 8,10,12(TURBO)of which 12=DLT Library,10=EMC SAN.
8 is available but I'm assuming the HP SAN will have two of the A6795A HBA's for redundancy, so do I move a card from 10 or 12 and deal with that or put one of the A6795A HBA's in slot 9 and pray?????

[Stefan Stechemesser]

Hi,

before putting a card in Slot 9 that maybe produces a system crash, I would connect the HP san via only one FC card until the data transfer is finished.
If you don't need the EMC san anymore, you can use this card as a backup.

Another possible solution could be to obtain a A6826A PCI-X Dual Channel FC HBA which can be installed in any slot. You could f.e. install it in Slot 9, use one port for HP SAN, the other for DLT (device files will change) and use the card in Slot 12 for HP SAN also to have two redundant FC channels.

The third possible solution would be to install the failover FC card in one of the slow slots and use it only in case of a FC problem on the primary card in Slot 8 (no load sharing, the LVM works in this way that only in case of a failure of the primary path, the secondary is used.)

By the way, maybe all the restrictions do are not nessecary for your machine. What is the original product number ?

you can get it with the "cstm" utility:

root@rhapsody / # cstm
...
cstm>sel d 1
cstm>info
-- Updating Map --
Updating Map...
cstm>wait
cstm>il
-- Converting a (15972) byte raw log file to text. --
Preparing the Information Tool Log for system on path system File ...

.... grcdg378.grc.hp.com : 15.140.11.78 ....

-- Information Tool Log for system on path system --

Log creation time: Fri Jul 8 12:59:49 2005

Hardware path: system


System Information for (rhapsody)
HPUX Model Number......: L3000
HPUX Model String......: 9000/800/L3000-7x
Original Product Number: A6797B
Current Product Number.: A6144B
...

as you can see, our test machine is a "B" variant of the L2000 and does not have any restrictions.


I hope this helps

Stefan