[SUMMARY] T3E & Sunblade 1000 Onboard FC-AL / NFS Server (Veritas Cluster)

From: Surinder S. Dio <S.S.Dio_at_gre.ac.uk>
Date: Thu Dec 13 2001 - 07:39:43 EST
Hi,

I asked the following recently:

=======================original question=========================

Does anyone know if the onboard FC-AL on a Sunblade 1000 will
support a T3 Fibre Array Raid or do I need to get a PCI FC Network
Adapter?

If I do need to get the adapter then will I be able to use it in a
Sunblade 100 instead of the sunblade 1000 and will the sunblade 100
be fairly good as a dedicated NFS server?

Additionally will I be able to use Veritas Cluster software (NFS
only) on a Sunblade 100?

I'd quite like to use the netra T1 instead of a sunblade option but
this only has the 1 PCI slot I understand so with the addition of FC
card I would have no room for a gigabit ethernet adapter in the
future. Unless I'm wrong :-)

==============================end===================

Thanks to Jed Dobson <jed@wgtech.com> & Tim Chipman <chipman@ecopiabio.com>
for their excellent replies - which I attach verbatim below.

Many thanks guys: 

1. It looks like I can't use the onboard FC-AL on the sunblade

2. the combo card looks like a good bet.

- I'm going to go with a Netra option probably the T1 (unless my
supplier comes up with a good cost for the E1) and I'm going to get
the combo card.

Rgds
Surinder

================= Tim Chapman  ====================== 

Regarding FCAL in the Blade100:

I recently tested an FCAL card / T3 combo in an Ultra5 (which has
33mhz, 32/64-bit PCI slots only) and the thing worked fine. The card
is best used in a 66mhz PCI slots I expect (better bandwidth, they
are typically found in "server grade" machines AFAIK) however it
should be decent in the "vanilla" PCI slot.

If the thing worked in an Ultra5, I cannot imagine there would be
problems with a Blade 100.

As for suitability of a blade100 for NFS server, should be fine but
of course will depend on how hard you hit the poor thing with
clients, etc etc. Clearly you want only low-access OS stuff on the
internal IDE hard drive ; you may also want to add a 2nd HD for
mirroring which would speed things up a bit and also provide some
drive failure redundancy.

Alas, no comments on the FCAL in the blade 1000. I'll be interested
to hear the outcome.

============================end======================

==========================Jed Dobson=================

S.S.Di> Does anyone know if the onboard FC-AL on a Sunblade 1000 will support
S.S.Di> a T3 Fibre Array Raid or do I need to get a PCI FC Network Adapter?          
                                                                                     
No this is not a certified configuration. The on-board FC-AL is intended             
for the FC-AL Multipacks and other FC-AL loop devices.                               
                                                                                     
S.S.Di> If I do need to get the adapter then will I be able to use it in a           
S.S.Di> Sunblade 100 instead of the sunblade 1000 and will the sunblade 100 be       
S.S.Di> fairly good as a dedicated NFS server?                                       
                                                                                     
Sure this should work fine. Since T3 is most likely going to be a                    
rackmount version I would go with a Netra T1 AC 200.                                 
                                                                                     
S.S.Di>                                                                              
S.S.Di> Additionally will I be able to use Veritas Cluster software (NFS only)       
S.S.Di> on a Sunblade 100?                                                           
                                                                                     
Sure Veritas is easy with their supported configs. This shouldn't be a               
problem - you will need a switch/hub however to have the T3 attached to              
two hosts.                                                                           
                                                                                     
S.S.Di> I'd quite like to use the netra T1 instead of a sunblade option but          
S.S.Di> this only has the 1 PCI slot I understand so with the addition of FC         
S.S.Di> card I would have no room for a gigabit ethernet adapter in the              
S.S.Di> future. Unless I'm wrong :-)                                                 
                                                                                     
Good call. Use the Netra E1 to get a net-gain of 3 slots. This will                  
support GigE and the FC-AL. Depending on needs you could use the new                 
FC-AL/Gigabit ethernet combo card with a FC-AL loop device like the A5200,           
or FC-AL multipacks.                                                                 
                                                                                     
http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hw/networking/connectivity/sungigabitethernet
+fcal/index.html                                                                     
                                                                                     
This would require using software mirror (NEVER NEVER use software RAID-5            
for NFS servers !!! )            

=========================end===================

------------------------------------------------------------------
Surinder Singh Dio , School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences
s.s.dio@gre.ac.uk  , University of Greenwich, London, England.
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Received on Thu Dec 13 06:41:12 2001

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