Fabric Clustering System 24-port 4x Fabric Copper Switch Installation Guide, March 2005

Chapter 1
5
1 HP-UX Integrity Installation Overview &
Planning
This chapter contains HP-UX installation information for the 376227-B21 HP 24-port 4x Fabric Copper
Switch and contains the following sections:
• “About InfiniBand‘”
• “HP Fabric Clustering System Components”
• “Installing HP Fabric Clustering System”
• “HP Fabric Clustering System Installation Prerequisites”
• “Install HP Fabric Clustering System Adapters”
• “Install HP Fabric Clustering System Software”
• “Install HP Fabric Clustering System Switches”
• “Attach Cable Guides & Cables”
• “Internet Protocol over InfiniBand (IPoIB)”
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HP welcomes your input. Please email us at: [e-mail] with comments or suggestions on
HP I/O Cards or related documentation.
All product documentation, including a comprehensive support guide, installation guide, release notes, as
well as information on supported servers, HP-UX versions, drivers, and patches, is available online at:
http://www.docs.hp.com.
1. Click on Browse by Topic.
2. Click on Networking and Communications.
3. Click on the Fabric Clustering System for InfiniBand product category.
About InfiniBand
InfiniBand is an industry-standard high-speed, packet-based interconnect for node-to-node communications.
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, InfiniBand 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
• Database clusters required to support and integrate with the Oracle 10gRAC database.
HP Fabric Clustering System Components
This section describes the various HP Fabric Clustering System products to implement an InfiniBand
solution. For more information on HP Integrity server systems that support these products, see the HP Fabric
Clustering System Release Notes.
NOTE This document uses HP Fabric Clustering System to refer to the hardware and software
that form the cluster interconnect system using InfiniBand technology.