Speaking of which... I noticed Netapp continues to ship F740'swith a PCI slot-based FC-AL adapter and cable to match. Are there still problems with the on-board FC-AL adapter? -- Brian Tao (BT300, taob@risc.org) "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't"
Brian, The onboard FCAL issue is one where we went through stages of discovery and tried to make the best decisions for our install base as we understood the problem. So, let me try to explain.
Back in the middle of last year we were researching FCAL noise issues and one of the things that we suspected was the onboard FCAL. The PCI adapter based FCAL loop was noticed to be cleaner in terms of signal quality. So we decided to start shipping all systems on PCI adapters from the factory while we researched the problem. We also implemented filters back here that would flag loop issues based on incoming autosupport messages and we called customers proactively to have them move to an adapter card. We did not have conclusive proof that the onboard FCAL caused problems - we were being cautious.
Since then we have found and addressed other weak spots that are more conclusive: adapter firmware issues, disk firmware issues, cable problems, LRC problems and installation problems. The current status is that the FCAL noise problem has diminished a lot. Recently (last month), I ran a script against the autosupport archives to find out how many customers were still on the onboard FCAL and how many of them have seen loop issues. Based on systems sending us autosupport, about 40% are still on onboard FCAL and of them less than 1% of the systems have seen loop noise.
I don't think there are generic problems with the onboard FCAL. What is very important is that you take care of the LRC and cable issues (Field Alert #61) and are on a current Data ONTAP version with upgraded firmware. The current decision regarding the FCAL loop issues is to continue to monitor autosupport to catch any suspect systems (onboard or PCI adapter issues) and stick with the PCI adapter solutions for systems shipping from the factory.
-diptish