Will An Old A Class Server Work With A CISCO NEXUS 2248TP 1GE Fabric Switch?

[PHSC]

Greetings all

We have an old relic a class server that we need to keep for historic purposes.  We recently had to relocate the server into a new data centre. 

The server LAN and ILO have been connected into a CISCO NEXUS 2248TP 1GE fabric switch…and we cannot connect to either or ping them.

Whilst I’ve asked the network team to double check the ports I’m wondering if this server is actually just too old to work with this much more recent switch.

I’ve trawled the net but can’t find an answer for this.

Anyone any idea if this old server is compatible with this switch?

• Server details:

System Model:    9000/800/A400-44
Processor Count: 1
Processor Speed: 440
Kernel Type:     /stand/vmunix: - PA-RISC 2.0 (LP64)
HPUX version: B.11.00

• Network component details:

august # lanscan
Hardware Station        Crd Hdw   Net-Interface  NM  MAC       HP-DLPI DLPI
Path     Address        In# State NamePPA        ID  Type      Support Mjr#
0/0/0/0  0x00306E26B184 0   UP    lan0 snap0     1   ETHER     Yes     119

Class       I  H/W Path      Driver    S/W State   H/W Type     Description
============================================================================
lan         0  0/0/0/0       btlan3    CLAIMED     INTERFACE    HP PCI 10/100Base-TX Core
                            /dev/diag/lan0  /dev/ether0

Core PCI 100BT Interface on path 0/0/0/0 --
Product ID:                Core PCI 100BT Interface
Device ID:                 0x0019     
Revision ID                0x0041     
Vendor ID:                 0x1011  ( Digital Equipment Corporation )
Class Code:                0x020000
  Base Class:              0x02 ( Network Controller. )
  Sub-Class/Interface:     00/00  ( Ethernet controller )
Device Status:             0x0280     
     Bit 7: Fast Back-to-Back Capable
     Bit 9-10: DEVSEL timing 01 - medium
Subsystem Vendor ID:       0x103c     
Subsystem ID:              0x104f

Thanks

[Patrick Wallek]

The built-in network ports, both the console and regular network, are 10/100 on this server.

Some of the older HP-UX servers had problems auto-negotiating speed and duplex.  You may need to manually set the port to 100FD on the switch and on the server (and console port) in order to get it to work.

[donna hofmeister]

what patrick said is right....but you may still find that it doesn't work.

many new switches claim to be able to do 10 or 100 but can't actually.

if that's the case, you'll need to put "simple" (off-the-shelf) switch in-between your system and the fancy, uber-expensive switch.

[Patrick Wallek]

In looking at the manuals for this series of servers (A400/A500/rp24xx) I discovered that the LAN Console port is a 10 Mb only.  It is NOT a 10/100.  So, if your new switch does not support 10 Mb, then you will have to do something else.

If it is not working with your Cisco Nexus, it may pay to do as Donna suggested and find a small 10/100/1000 switch and use it for this server.

[PHSC]

Thanks Patrick and Donna for the info.  The Network chaps have amended the speed of the GSP port to 10mb and it is now working.

They have tried setting the NIC port to 10mb as well but without luck.  Interestingly, whilst connected to the console via the GSP and the port speed is changed it detects something and this error pops up (this occurred for both 10mb and 100mb) .

*************************10/100 Mb/s LAN/9000 Networking********************@#%
Mon Aug 07 BST 2017 15:41:31.432084  DISASTER     Subsys:BASE100      Loc:00000
<6001> HPCORE 10/100BASE-T driver detected bad cable connection between
       the adapter in slot(Crd In#) 0 and the hub or switch.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'll have a look and see if changing the HP_BASE100_SPEED[0] field in the /etc/rc.config.d/hpbase100conf file has any effect...

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

You can check and set the network speed from the command line as well.

To check the current speed setting

# lanadmin -x 0

Where "0" is the PPA number of the NIC.

To set the speed:

# lanadmin -X 100FD 0

This will allow you to experiment with different speed setting manually to see if you can get communication established.

[PHSC]

Nice one Patrick.

Turned out to be two issue here.  We set the port speed to 10mb and there was also a sneaky old O/S bug which would not take the new subnet mask of 255.255.255.128 thus the network card was showing as not configured. Implemented HP RFC 1122. Was then able to manually configure the network card and bring the server online.

Issue resolved.  Thanks