AB291A 12-Port 4X Fabric Copper Switch Installation Guide, April 2004

Installation Overview & Planning
Overview of the HP Fabric Clustering System
Chapter 1
3
1 Installation Overview & Planning
NOTE The latest copy of this document can be found at http://docs.hp.com within the
Networking and Communications area.
Overview of the HP Fabric Clustering System
This document contains the following sections that give installation information for HP Fabric:
• “About HP Fabric Clustering System for InfiniBand‘”
• “HP Fabric Clustering System Hardware Components”
• “HP Fabric Installation Prerequisites”
• “Install Fabric Adapters”
• “Install HP Fabric Software”
• “Install Fabric Switches”
• “Attach Cable Guides & Cables”
• “Internet Protocol over InfiniBand‘ (IPoIB)”
About HP Fabric Clustering System for InfiniBand
InfiniBand is an industry-standard high-speed, packet-based interconnect for node-to-node communications.
HP Fabric Clustering System for InfiniBand provides higher speed, lower network latency and uses less CPU
than other industry standard protocols (for example, Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet). Instead of using a
traditional bus-based technology, HP Fabric is built around switched fabric architecture, providing the
bandwidth necessary for high speed data transfer. For more information on the InfiniBand standard see
“http://www.infinibandta.org”.
HP’s release of this clustering solution delivers the performance and scalability required by the following:
• Technical Computing Clusters supporting HP Message Passing Interface (MPI) based applications
HP Fabric Clustering System Hardware Components
This section describes the various HP Fabric products. For more information on HP Integrity server systems
that support HP Fabric products, see the HP Fabric Clustering System Release Notes, available at
http://www.docs.hp.com/en/netcom.html#Fabric%20Clustering%20System%20for%20InfiniBand.
NOTE This document uses the term HP Fabric Clustering System to refer to the hardware and
software that form the HP Fabric Clustering System interconnect product.
The term HP Fabric Clustering System refers to the following copper-based hardware
components:
• AB286A HP PCI-X 2-port 4X Fabric (HPC) Adapter
• AB291A HP 12-port 4X Fabric Copper Switch