HP StorageWorks Fabric OS 5.3.1 release notes (AA-RWEYI-TE, March 2008)

Topic Description
Scalability
• Support for Default Zoning policies has been added to Fabric OS 5.1.0.
Typically, when you issue the cfgDisable command in a large fabric with
thousands of devices, the name server indicates to all hosts that they can
communicate with each other. To ensure that all devices in a fabric do not see
each other during a cfgDisable operation, you can activate a Default Zone
with policy set to no access. If Default zo ning policies show enabled, all
cfgEnable/disable commands and zoning changes must be run from a
switch in the fabric running Fabric OS 5.1.0/5.2.0a.
• In la rge fabrics with more than 1,000 ports, HP recommends that the MS
Platform Database be disabled. The Platform DB must also be disabled before
downgrading to earlier versions of Fabric OS. This can be done using the
msPLMgmtDeactivate command.
FRU insertion
The FW_FRU_INSERTED message is displayed twice when a power supply FRU
is insert
ed and powered on. There is no functional impact.
System boot
Not all Fabric OS services run when the prompt becomes available during boot
up. Wait for all the services to come up before using the switch or performing
zoning actions.
Performance Monitoring
If the user tries to save more than 512 monitors using the perfCfgSave
command, some of the monitors may be lost.
Manage
ment — Proxy
switch
es
If you using a Fabric OS 4.x switch as an API or SMI-S proxy to manage a 5.1.0
switch, you must be running Fabric OS 4.4.0d.
FCIP
• Frame drops observed on FCIP slow links:
• The frame drops occur when the FCIP tunnel bandwidth is set to 10 Base-T
(10Mbp s) , E1 (1.048Mbps ) , o r T 1 (1.54 4Mbps) .
• With E1 or T1, frames drop even without an impaired link.
• With 10 Base-T, frame drops may be observed when a low impairment
is put to the link.
• The portperfshow command indicated inc orrect (smaller) bidirectional
throughput on the FCIP tunnel when Fastwrite/Tape Pipelining is enabled.
• Fastwrite/Tape Pipelining did not inform user when it failed due to multiple
equal paths configured on 2 GbE ports.
• Backup jobs initiated from the Symantec BackupExec app lication slowed
noticeably after adding significant I/O traffic from regular hosts and targets to
the F CIP tunnel. A port-based routing policy must be used for Tape devices.
Access Gateway vs
Standard Switch Mode
When using the Blade server SAN switch in Access Gateway mode, most switch
features are no longer applicable. These features include Admin Domains,
Advanced Performance Monitoring, direct connection to SAN target devices,
Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop support, Fabric Manager, FICON, IP over FC, ISL
Trunking, Extended Fabrics, Management Services , Name Services (SNS), port
mirroring, Secure FOS, SMI-S, and Zoning. These switch features are available in
the default switch mode of operation.
Access Gateway mode is not supported in the p-class Bla de system if there are
two half-height servers in the same sleeve (Server Slot 1 and 9, 2 and 10, and
soon). Twop-classhalf-heightserversinthesamesleeverequireFibreChannel
Arbitrated Loop operation. The c-Class half-height Blade servers do not require
Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop and work fine with both access gateway mode
and Standard Switch Mode.
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