A6795A HBA's and N4000

[Tom Danzig]

I received a message from our hardware support vendor regarding A6795A FC HBA compatability (or lack thereof) with various servers including N class machines (A3639A and A3639B). The "issue is characterized by a High Priority Machine Check (HPMC) during boot-up".

I have (2) N classes with two of these HBA's in each running for 2+ years w/o issue. Has anyone else heard this or experienced issues with this configuration in the past?

Thanks for any insight you may have.

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Tom,

This is a feedback we got from out hp support on a similar question.

/Quote/

In response to your query about using A6795A 2gb fc cards in your a3639b server, ...... We will acknowledge and support the use of a6795a 2gb fc cards in this server ONLY if they are installed in EVEN numbered slots. Installation of this card in odd numbered slots can and will result in an hpmc at boot time. This has been confirmed with our Backline solution engineer -------. For future referance or possible other server implementation, this is only true for the a3639a and a3639b the a3639c is NOT effected.
Thank you for allowing HP to provide your services.

/EndQuote/

[Tom Danzig]

Thanks for the info Sanjay. Odd that your info say "can and WILL get an LPMC" if the card is in an odd # slot. Three of mine are in even slots and one is in an odd # slot. I have had no boot issues with either box!?

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Tom,

I try not to get too involved with the wordings. If it works in an even slot without problem it is fine with me. As long as hp says it is supported on the even bus and i have an even bus free, i'll use it there.

Moreover they are saying that model "a3639c" is supported without any issue. Are you sure that one server on which this card is working in an odd slot is not a supported model.

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Tom Danzig]

Servers are:

A3639B Card in slots 3 and 10
A3639A Card in slots 4 and 10

Both working fine.

[Zygmunt Krawczyk]

Hi Tom,

this problem was resolved in the latest N4000 firmware rev 43.43. Here is the text from firmware description:

"A remote possibility exists in the IODC subset of
PDC on all PA-RISC systems (affecting PCI Fibre
Channel Adapter cards A5158A and A6795A) that can
allow a return from a read operation without
actually reading the requested block from the disk.
This can result in kernel text, kernel static data,
and ioconfig file to be read into memory
incorrectly. This will result in either a system
crash with a High Priority Machine Check (HPMC) or
a panic (during boot-up or later). This was
discovered in extreme lab testing and has now been
resolved"

The firmware is available from ITRC as patch:
PF_CPIW4343 (update from tape)
PHSS_31214 (patch for HP-UX 11.00)
PHSS_30724 (patch for HP-UX 11.11)

Regards,
Zygmunt

[Tom Danzig]

Zygmunt:

Thanks for the firmware info. Whatt's odd is that the patch addresses the issue with both the 6795 and 5158 HBA's. We were told that the "solution" was to substitute the 6795's with 5158's.

[Zygmunt Krawczyk · Accepted solution]

Hi Tom,

read the doc:

"A6795A Fibre Channel Mass Storage Adapter Installation Guide"

http://www.docs.hp.com/hpux/pdf/A6795-90005.pdf

page 5 - minimum firmware requirement rp7400, PDC 43.22

page 13 - N4000 supported slots: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12

I recommend download the latest HP-UX FC driver also. It is available from:

http://www.software.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=FibrChanl00

Regards,
Zygmunt