Summary: HBA recommendations for various Sun Hardware

General consensus was to use what the storage vendor recommends and 
consulting with their compatibility matrix.

Recommendations are Qlogic QLA23xx cards, Emulex, Sun's Qlogic cards broadly 
- added responses below. Thanks for this resourceful information from 
experience people on this list.

Use whatever the storage vendor (EMC) supports and in their compatibility 
matrix.

One reponse was to use the Qlogic QLA23xx cards across un, Linux, or 
Windows. platforms to connect to our SAN.

Another response was that they used Emulex in the past for the Windows 
servers and ran in to problems and have upgraded all the to Qlogic and had 
no problems since.

Another experience was to use Emulex for disk connectivity and JNI for tape. 
  Now we pretty much use the Sun Qlogic HBA's for everything.  They support 
the ssd driver which is nice because it means no more reboots to add disk!  
They are also supported by our tape vendor, StorageTek.  The Sun part number 
is SG-XPCI2FC-QF2.  If you are using Sun storage, I'm sure this is what Sun 
would recommend.  We use EMC, and they have worked just fine.


I currently use Qlogic cards. They have both a CLI and GUI interface and 
their driver supports load-balancing (LUN level, not traffic level) and path 
failover high availability. I found them to be really easy to set up and 
have tested the failover successfully.

have you checked the sun systems handbook on sunsolve?

the older and more accessible version is also available on the web. (its 
location is mentioned in the archives.) the handbook lists all compatible 
hardware for sun machines.

See the 'what works with what' Matrix (ask your SUN VB) and additional the 
other pages what SUN supports. If you have to make money with your Server, 
dont make experiments!

I have had nothing but Joy from the Sun branded Dual-Port 2GB QLogics (sun 
part X6767 I think). They are easy to configure, and do not require messing 
around with sd.conf. Plus, Sun look after the driver directly, so you are 
much less likely to have complications with patches, updates
and so forth. If you are using Sun Branded HDS arrays, even better.


What are you connecting to? If Sun, use Sun cards (Sun QLogic with Sun's 
firmware)

Are you under a Sun maintenance contract? If so, use the Sun Qlogic card is 
possible. Check first with the storage vendor.  This card is 10x more 
stabler than the Sun JNI (Yes, the have this, but it has a BAD driver  
compared to  vanilla ;-). It also allows no-reboot reconfig and integrates 
with Sun's
stack nicley, using SUn San packages (downloadable)

Alternatively, the vanilla QLogic will be my second choice. Lately they have 
very stable drivers. It does make for additional complexity though. However, 
ensure you have the latest firmware as well before using it (downloadable)

Try and stay away from Emulex. Had a few panics due to them. Not nice, bus 
timeouts/hangs etc Urghhh . They "were" good. Now not so good - drivers!!!

PS: The Sun Qlogic will be more expensive that the vanilla. Try for discount 
if talking to a Sun rep. Alternatively look at grey market. Just make sure 
you get a 2 or  3 month warranty which is the norm. Also upgrade to the 
latest firmware (via patch)

Emulex LP9000 series work fine. You can pick up the LP8000s can be had on 
Ebay quite cheap too. There's the Qlogic QLC series, HPAQ do them though 
these are generally preferred for use with Storageworks arrays.

One emphatic response was to use Emulex and emulex only.

I have 2 clariions and I use emulex. Lp9002-le cards. They are pci, and are 
on the emc support matrix. Best advice I can give is to use cards supported 
by your SAN  vendor.


Regards
John


>-----Original Message-----
>Sent: Friday, July 15, 2005 4:21 PM
>To: sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
>Subject: HBA recommendations for various Sun Hardware
>
>Gurus:
>
>Would you recommend any fiber HBA for SAN storage given JNI cards are not 
>available anymore?
>
>How are you transitioning to other vendors , what method of certification 
>you are adopting.
>
>Qlogic, emulex, Sun or any others to be used with PCI ??
>
>Any information is appreciated?
>
>Regards
>John

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