Summary: intermixing 7200RPM disks with 10,000RPM disks in E450 (fwd)

From: Steven Sakata (steven@hawaii.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 22 1999 - 12:38:50 CDT


I got many responses to my question on whether or not it was okay to intermix
9.1GB 7200RPM and 18.2GB 10000RPM disks on the same SCSI bus in an E450
(original message is below).

After calling the problem into Sun, they told me there was a Sun internal
document stating that this was not a supported configuration by Sun. The
tech person was not willing to share it with me. Because of this, I decided
to shuffle the disks around so that all the same type of disks were on the
same SCSI bus.

However, many people responded saying that they have configurations where
they do intermix the disks and they do work. Here's the wide variety of
responses that I got:

- Reseat the disks.
- Verify the correct SCSI interfaces (diff vs single-ended).
- Putting a terminator on the external SCSI connector.
- Make sure that the total length of the SCSI cables is not exceeding 6m.
- Create /kernel/drv/glm.conf with "scsi-options=0x3f8" in it.
- Add the following to /etc/system:
     set scsi_options=0x58
     set scsi_reset_delay=10000
     set sd:sd_max_throttle=16
     set sd:sd_error_level=0x1
- Change the backplane.
- Apply a patch for glm (they didn't specify the patch # though).
- Update the BIOS of the E450, install all recommended patches, and install
  a firmware patch for the 18GB drives (Fujitsu).
- Not supported configuration by Sun.

Thanks goes to:

Tom Mornini
Kevin Sheehan
Jeff Howard
Anthony David
Imre Kolos
Ken Robson
John F Mclaughlin
Michael Hare
Andrew Watkins
Bill Carlson
Timothy Lindgren
Todd A. Fiedler
Yann
Phil Scarr
Richard F. Strasser

- Steven.

On Thu, 9 Sep 1999, Steven Sakata wrote:

> We purchased and E450 that had 10 internal 7200RPM 9.1 GB disks and we spread
> them across 5 SCSI buses (i.e. looking at the E450 we had the disks spread out
> on every other row).
>
> The system worked fine, but we ran out of disks. We then bought 10 10,000RPM
> 18.2GB disks and we filled up the E450. After installing the disks and
> booting up the system, it comes up with the following error messages:
>
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: WARNING: /pci@4,2000/scsi@1,1 (glm5):
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: SCSI bus DATA IN phase parity error
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: WARNING: ID[SUNWpd.glm.parity_check.6010]
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: WARNING: /pci@4,2000/scsi@1,1 (glm5):
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: Target 0 reducing sync. transfer rate
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: WARNING: ID[SUNWpd.glm.sync_wide_backoff.6014]
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: WARNING: /pci@4,2000/scsi@1,1 (glm5):
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: SCSI bus DATA IN phase parity error
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: WARNING: ID[SUNWpd.glm.parity_check.6010]
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: WARNING: /pci@4,2000/scsi@1,1 (glm5):
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: Target 0 disabled wide SCSI mode
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: WARNING: ID[SUNWpd.glm.sync_wide_backoff.6012]
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: WARNING: /pci@4,2000/scsi@1,1 (glm5):
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: Target 0 reverting to async. mode
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: WARNING: ID[SUNWpd.glm.sync_wide_backoff.6013]
> Sep 8 21:26:07 sun99svl unix: <SUN9.0G cyl 4924 alt 2 hd 27 sec 133>
>
> Does anyone know if it's okay to intermix the 7200RPM disks with the 10,000RPM
> disks on a single SCSI bus?
>
> Thanks, Steven.
>
>
>
>



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