Adapter Teaming - Fiber Channel

[Tracey]

I've been asked by my NT guru if that HP has any capabilities for "Adapter Teaming" - Using of two Network connections as one virtural IP for load contral. And Fiber Channel for acessing Disks or Array's. Any help will be appreciated.

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Tracey:

"Auto Port Aggregation" is the networking software you want to use. From document #KBRC00000938:

/QUOTE/

On all pre-11.0 systems, there is a limitation of one lan card on one ip subnet/network.

On 11.0, the base Operating system has this same restriction. However, the optional product called AUTO PORT AGGREGATION (APA - product number J4240AA) can be installed on a 11.0 system, and this product does allow
multiple lan cards to be configured on the same subnet/network for the purposes of bandwidth scaling, load balancing and redundancy. The types of lan cards and systems that work with this product is somewhat restrictive, and the latest copy of the release notes and/or user manual for this
product should be reviewed to see if you have one of the system/lan card combinations that the product supports. These manuals can be
reviewed at docs.hp.com, and their names/part numbers are:

HP Auto Port Aggregation Users guide - J4240-90006
HP Auto Port Aggregation Release Notes - J4240-90005

Note that while configuring multiple lan cards on the same network will not work, there is nothing in SAM or in the ifconfig command
that will prevent you from doing this. It is possible to accidentally configure both cards to be on the same network, and both IP addresses will respond. However, when the system sends data out to devices on that network, only one card will be used.

/END_QUOTE/

...JRF...

[Frederic Soriano]

Hi Tracey,

Regarding your first question, I know that there is a software from HP that allows IP aggregation (Auto Port Aggregation software). Go to http://www.hp.com/esy/systems_networking/networking/products/autoport.html for more details.

You can use FC to access your diskarrays through a FC switch: this is what we've done to connect a 12h autoraid diskarray (two FW/SCSI controllers) to an existing FC configuration. More information can be found at the URL http://www.hp.com/go/san.

Best regards.

Fred.

[James R. Ferguson]

Tracey:

With regard to balancing IO to disk, LVM uses its primary path to disk (or disk arrays) until it becomes unavailable, in which case it switches to the alternate path. No load balancing is done.

If you are using EMC2 disk, take a look at their PowerPath product.

If you are looking at HP-UX 11.11, you could use the VERITAS Volume Manager (VxVM) in lieu of LVM. This allows load balancing down both paths in what is called active/active mode on the disk. For an overview of VxVM see this link to the "VERITAS Volume Manager 3.1 Migration Guide":

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/B7961-90001/B7961-90001.html

...JRF...

[Ron Barak]

As for the sharing of two LAN cards, HP has the 'auto-port aggregation' solution, where you can combine several Fast or Giga Ethernet LAN cards into one virtual connection (note that you cannot mix different speed LAN cards).
See http://techsolutions.hp.com/dir_apa/icvt/usingapa.pdf

Bye,
Ron.