I know that both of my 760's came with PCI FCALs and terminators on the on-board (no orange stickers).
And I remember my instructor at Admin telling us to not use them on any 7xx series filer.
- Scott W.
-----Original Message----- From: July @ Zerowait [mailto:july@zerowait.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 8:58 AM To: Brian Long; Walter Ellinthorpe Cc: toasters@mathworks.com; David Lugo Subject: Re: On Board Fiber Channel performance
To my knowledge the problem with onboard FCAL was only in F740's. Anyone else hear differently?
July ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian Long" brilong@cisco.com To: "Walter Ellinthorpe" walter.ellinthorpe@unitedmessaging.com Cc: toasters@mathworks.com; "David Lugo" david.lugo@unitedmessaging.com Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 9:21 PM Subject: Re: On Board Fiber Channel performance
I have Filers in several locations. My newest installation has a noticeable DECREASE in performance.
Of all the possible factors (OS version, network hardware/software etc..) the only common denominator is that all of my previous installations have filers with two PCI Fiber Channel Cards and the filers in the new location use One PCI Fiber Channel card and one On-Board Fiber Channel adapter.
Are there any known issues with using the on-board Fiber Channel adapter vs. PCI Fiber Channel adapters ??
Walter,
I assume you're using a F7XX-series filer since the newer F8XX filers do not have onboard FC-AL.
Netapp's F7XX motherboard FC-AL has a known bug and Netapp ended up shipping every F7XX with a free PCI FC-AL card after the bug was found. They usually shipped the motherboard FC-AL with a terminator and an orange sticker saying not to use that port :-)
I would highly recommend moving off the onboard FC-AL to a PCI FC-AL connection.
/Brian/
Brian Long | | | Americas IT Hosting Sys Admin | .|||. .|||. Phone: (919) 392-7363 | ..:|||||||:...:|||||||:.. Pager: (888) 651-2015 | C i s c o S y s t e m s
all of our 720's came with a PCI f-cal and a terminator for the onboard.
except one. an SE told me to call it in, and when i did, a terminator and pci f-cal showed up in the mail for free :)
the rumour i heard is that the on-board wasn't up to spec, so there was a patch. i was actually pretty impressed by netapp's handling of the situation.
-- email: lance_bailey@pmc-sierra.com box: Lance R. Bailey, unix Administrator vox: +1 604 415 6646 PMC-Sierra, Inc fax: +1 604 415 6151 105-8555 Baxter Place http://www.lydia.org/~zaphod Burnaby BC, V5A 4V7 Politics:From the greek "poly"(many) & ticks(an annoying bloodsucker) -- Shostack
On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 05:31:36PM -0500, Waters, G Scott DSTI wrote:
I know that both of my 760's came with PCI FCALs and terminators on the on-board (no orange stickers).
And I remember my instructor at Admin telling us to not use them on any 7xx series filer.
- Scott W.
-----Original Message----- From: July @ Zerowait [mailto:july@zerowait.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 8:58 AM To: Brian Long; Walter Ellinthorpe Cc: toasters@mathworks.com; David Lugo Subject: Re: On Board Fiber Channel performance
To my knowledge the problem with onboard FCAL was only in F740's. Anyone else hear differently?
July ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian Long" brilong@cisco.com To: "Walter Ellinthorpe" walter.ellinthorpe@unitedmessaging.com Cc: toasters@mathworks.com; "David Lugo" david.lugo@unitedmessaging.com Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 9:21 PM Subject: Re: On Board Fiber Channel performance
I have Filers in several locations. My newest installation has a noticeable DECREASE in performance.
Of all the possible factors (OS version, network hardware/software etc..) the only common denominator is that all of my previous installations have filers with two PCI Fiber Channel Cards and the filers in the new location use One PCI Fiber Channel card and one On-Board Fiber Channel adapter.
Are there any known issues with using the on-board Fiber Channel adapter vs. PCI Fiber Channel adapters ??
Walter,
I assume you're using a F7XX-series filer since the newer F8XX filers do not have onboard FC-AL.
Netapp's F7XX motherboard FC-AL has a known bug and Netapp ended up shipping every F7XX with a free PCI FC-AL card after the bug was found. They usually shipped the motherboard FC-AL with a terminator and an orange sticker saying not to use that port :-)
I would highly recommend moving off the onboard FC-AL to a PCI FC-AL connection.
/Brian/
Brian Long | | | Americas IT Hosting Sys Admin | .|||. .|||. Phone: (919) 392-7363 | ..:|||||||:...:|||||||:.. Pager: (888) 651-2015 | C i s c o S y s t e m s
Just to follow up ...................
I got additional FC cards for the Filers in question and we upgraded one of the clusters that was having problems. IMMEDIATE performance increase of 40% on all clients (except the ones running RedHat 7.3 ... that required some more work :-) )
Thank you Toasters!!!
--Walter Ellinthorpe
Lance R Bailey wrote:
all of our 720's came with a PCI f-cal and a terminator for the onboard.
except one. an SE told me to call it in, and when i did, a terminator and pci f-cal showed up in the mail for free :)
the rumour i heard is that the on-board wasn't up to spec, so there was a patch. i was actually pretty impressed by netapp's handling of the situation.
-- email: lance_bailey@pmc-sierra.com box: Lance R. Bailey, unix Administrator vox: +1 604 415 6646 PMC-Sierra, Inc fax: +1 604 415 6151 105-8555 Baxter Place http://www.lydia.org/~zaphod Burnaby BC, V5A 4V7 Politics:From the greek "poly"(many) & ticks(an annoying bloodsucker) -- Shostack
On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 05:31:36PM -0500, Waters, G Scott DSTI wrote:
I know that both of my 760's came with PCI FCALs and terminators on the on-board (no orange stickers).
And I remember my instructor at Admin telling us to not use them on any 7xx series filer.
- Scott W.
-----Original Message----- From: July @ Zerowait [mailto:july@zerowait.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 8:58 AM To: Brian Long; Walter Ellinthorpe Cc: toasters@mathworks.com; David Lugo Subject: Re: On Board Fiber Channel performance
To my knowledge the problem with onboard FCAL was only in F740's. Anyone else hear differently?
July ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian Long" brilong@cisco.com To: "Walter Ellinthorpe" walter.ellinthorpe@unitedmessaging.com Cc: toasters@mathworks.com; "David Lugo" david.lugo@unitedmessaging.com Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 9:21 PM Subject: Re: On Board Fiber Channel performance
I have Filers in several locations. My newest installation has a noticeable DECREASE in performance.
Of all the possible factors (OS version, network hardware/software etc..) the only common denominator is that all of my previous installations have filers with two PCI Fiber Channel Cards and the filers in the new location use One PCI Fiber Channel card and one On-Board Fiber Channel adapter.
Are there any known issues with using the on-board Fiber Channel adapter vs. PCI Fiber Channel adapters ??
Walter,
I assume you're using a F7XX-series filer since the newer F8XX filers do not have onboard FC-AL.
Netapp's F7XX motherboard FC-AL has a known bug and Netapp ended up shipping every F7XX with a free PCI FC-AL card after the bug was found. They usually shipped the motherboard FC-AL with a terminator and an orange sticker saying not to use that port :-)
I would highly recommend moving off the onboard FC-AL to a PCI FC-AL connection.
/Brian/
Brian Long | | | Americas IT Hosting Sys Admin | .|||. .|||. Phone: (919) 392-7363 | ..:|||||||:...:|||||||:.. Pager: (888) 651-2015 | C i s c o S y s t e m s
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Lance R Bailey -
Walter Ellinthorpe -
Waters, G Scott DSTI