HyperFabric Administrator's Guide (HP-UX 11i v1)

Planning the Fabric
Hyper Messaging Protocol (HMP)
Chapter 2 35
• HMP is supported on the HF2 adapter, A6386A, only.
• Although HMP is supported on A6092A HF1 (copper) adapters, the
performance advantages that HMP offers are not completely realized
unless HMP is used with A6386A HF2 (fiber) adapters and related
fiber hardware. See Table 2-6 on page 37 for details. The local
failover configuration of HMP is supported only on the A6386A HF2
adapters.
• Maximum Supported Nodes and Adapter Cards
HyperFabric clusters running HMP applications are limited to
supporting a maximum of 64 adapter cards. However, in local
failover configurations, a maximum of only 52 adapters are
supported.
In point-to-point configurations running HMP applications, the
complexity and performance limitations of having a large number of
nodes in a cluster make it necessary to include switches in the fabric.
Typically, point-to-point configurations consist of only 2 or 3 nodes.
In switched configurations running HMP applications, HyperFabric
supports a maximum of 64 interconnected adapter cards.
A maximum of 8 HyperFabric adapter cards are supported per
instance of the HP-UX operating system. The actual number of
adapter cards a particular node is able to accommodate also depends
on slot availability and system resources. See node specific
documentation for details.
A maximum of 8 configured IP addresses are supported by the
HyperFabric subsystem per instance of the HP-UX operating system.
• Maximum Number of Switches
You can interconnect (mesh) up to 4 switches (16-port copper, 16-port
fiber or Mixed 8 fiber ports / 4 copper ports) in a single HyperFabric
cluster.
• Trunking Between Switches (multiple connections)
Trunking between switches can be used to increase bandwidth and
cluster throughput. Trunking is also a way to eliminate a possible
single point of failure. The number of trunked cables between nodes
is only limited by port availability. To assess the effects of trunking
on the performance of any particular HyperFabric configuration,
contact your HP representative.