SUMMARY: E4500 & EMC HBA's

I had 3  answers from:

Christopher Dupre
Christopher Ciborowski
Derrick Daugherty

Bottom line is 'yes, it will work'.  Both types  - FC-AL and FC-SW will
sit happily on the same boards. The biting point is of course bus
bandwidth, but
as long as we add the new cards in the right slot everything will be
hunky-dory;
the i/o boards have 2 x SysIO controller chips, each of which is capable
of 200MB/s
throughput - which is about what Sbus peaks at [which is why SunFires are
PCI
by the way -  goes up to 500MB/s] . The on-board SOC+ hangs off SysIO 0
(which
also drives sbus slots 1 & 2) - so we have to add the new card into slot 0
and share
with the FEPs chip.

many thanks,
Mike Kiernan
--
Onet.pl S.A.
http://www.onet.pl/
Krakow, Poland

> We have an E4500 with 2x i/o boards currently. Each i/o board currently
> has a
> Sun FC-AL HBA (shows as Dual-SBus-SOC+ in prtdiag-v). We'd like to add
> some Clariion arrays (currently there are 5200's hanging off the
> existing hba's).
> This means adding 2 EMC HBA's (which are none-AL apparently), 1 to each
> of the two i/o boards, so we'll have:
>
> Board 1: Dual-Sbus-SOC+   && EMC HBAGL-SUNS
> Board 2: Dual-Sbus-SOC+   && EMC HBAGL-SUNS
>
> a) will this work/anyone have any experience?
> b) will this suck too much backplane and or i/o board bandwidth?
>     [10 x 400MHz 8MB blackbirds,  10GB RAM]
>
> any good EMC links...???  :-)
>
> many thanks,
> Mike
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Subject:
>         Re: E4500 & EMC HBA's
>    Date:
>         Mon, 2 Jul 2001 11:59:55 -0400 (EDT)
>    From:
>         Christophe Dupre
>      To:
>         Mike Kiernan
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, 2 Jul 2001, Mike Kiernan wrote:
>
> > We have an E4500 with 2x i/o boards currently. Each i/o board currently
> > has a
> > Sun FC-AL HBA (shows as Dual-SBus-SOC+ in prtdiag-v). We'd like to add
> > some Clariion arrays (currently there are 5200's hanging off the
> > existing hba's).
> > This means adding 2 EMC HBA's (which are none-AL apparently), 1 to each
> > of the two i/o boards, so we'll have:
> >
> > Board 1: Dual-Sbus-SOC+   && EMC HBAGL-SUNS
> > Board 2: Dual-Sbus-SOC+   && EMC HBAGL-SUNS
> >
> > a) will this work/anyone have any experience?
>
> Yes it will work. Make sure you install the EMC SBus cards in the top SBus
> slots so that you use both SBus channels on each I/O board.
>
> > b) will this suck too much backplane and or i/o board bandwidth?
> >     [10 x 400MHz 8MB blackbirds,  10GB RAM]
>
> The only problem is that an SBus channel only provides 120MB/s of
> bandwidth, while FC-AL can use up to 200MB/s (100MB/s full-duplex).
>
> --
> Christophe Dupre
> System Administrator, Scientific Computation Research Center
> Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
> Troy, NY        USA
> Phone: (518) 276-2578  -  Fax: (518) 276-4886
>
>
> Subject:
>         RE: E4500 & EMC HBA's
>    Date:
>         Mon, 2 Jul 2001 09:47:40 -0700
>    From:
>         Christopher Ciborowski
>      To:
>         "'Mike Kiernan'"
>
>
>
>
> Mike,
>
> Assuming that you have 1 hba in slot 0, using the onboard scsi and ethernet,
> and will be adding 1 FC-SW hba to slot 1, you should be OK.
>
> On the I/O board, there are 2 sysio chips, each of which can handle
> 200mb/sec (maximum bandwidth).  Sysio chip 0 controls sbus slots 1 and 2 and
> the onboard SOC+, sysio chip 1 controls sbus0 and the other onboard adapters
> (SCSI, ethernet, etc.).
>
> So, if you are using one GBIC on the hba in slot 0 (maximum 100mb/sec
> bandwidth FC-AL full duplex...most applications you will not see
> simultaneous 100mb/sec in both directions) you will be under the limits for
> the bandwith allowable for that sysio controller.  If you are using the
> onboard scsi, add 20mb/sec, and another 10mb/sec if the ethernet interface
> is being used.  This totals 130Mb/sec, which is under the maximum bandwith
> allowed by the sysio controller 1.  Be sure not to use both GBICs on the
> SOC+ card.  This will drive the throughput over 200Mb/sec, and you will have
> congestion on the bus.  Adding the EMC hba to slot 1 which will also run at
> 100Mb/sec (FC-SW), will not saturate the sysio controller, assuming that
> there is nothing else being added to the slots which will drive the total
> above 200mb/sec.  You can add another FC-AL/FC-SW/GigE card in slot 2, but
> cannot use the onboard SOC+ slots.  Keep in mind that these numbers are
> maximum bandwidth, which can be somewhat larger than actual throughput.  For
> example, the fast ethernet throughput is actually closer to 4mb/sec.
>
> Regarding the total backplane bandwith and how this figures in, the E4500
> can handle 2.5Gb/sec, bandwidth (sustained).  Each CPU pushes about 25Mb/sec
> (250Mb/sec total) and the I/O controllers is roughly 460Mb/sec (both I/O
> boards and all interfaces).  Total, 710Mb/sec, is under the maximum
> bandwidth provided by the gigaplane/UPA backplane/interconnect.
>
> Just FYI, most of this information is provided in the Sun SA-400 class
> titled "Solaris System Performance Management".  I highly recommend this
> class.  Lots of theory, but a good class.
>
> Chris
>
> Subject:
>           Re: E4500 & EMC HBA's
>       Date:
>           Mon, 2 Jul 2001 13:34:16 -0500
>      From:
>           Derrick Daugherty
>        To:
>           Mike Kiernan
>  References:
>           1
>
>
>
>
> It's rumored that around Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 05:36:34PM +0200
> Mike Kiernan  wrote:
> > We have an E4500 with 2x i/o boards currently. Each i/o board currently
> > has a
> > Sun FC-AL HBA (shows as Dual-SBus-SOC+ in prtdiag-v). We'd like to add
> > some Clariion arrays (currently there are 5200's hanging off the
> > existing hba's).
> > This means adding 2 EMC HBA's (which are none-AL apparently), 1 to each
> > of the two i/o boards, so we'll have:
> >
> > Board 1: Dual-Sbus-SOC+   && EMC HBAGL-SUNS
> > Board 2: Dual-Sbus-SOC+   && EMC HBAGL-SUNS
> >
> > a) will this work/anyone have any experience?
>
> it will work..although i haven't done that exact config.  the adapters
> will have diff .conf files in /kernel/drv  you can separate the info
> there.  I'm assuming you're getting the emulex HBA's, which I like a lot
> as far as configs go, very clean.  I do have a host with sun loops and
> then jni fabric and it's happy.
>
> > b) will this suck too much backplane and or i/o board bandwidth?
> >     [10 x 400MHz 8MB blackbirds,  10GB RAM]
>
> depends on how much data you plan on pumping through there.  If it ends
> up being too laggy then you could justify the additional io boards.  I
> don't recall the max throughput of them off the top of my head though,
> it may be wide enough for both cards w/o an impact.
>
> > any good EMC links...???  :-)
>
> nope..i keep meaning to fix this....  i don't think there are enough
> storage/san links in general...
>
> -d
>