SCSI Solutions White Paper - HP-UX

− A6829A – PCI 2-port Ultra160 SCSI card

− A6828A – PCI 1-port Ultra160 SCSI card

− A5838A – PCI 2-port Ultra2 SCSI, 2-port 100base-t combo card

− A5159B – PCI 2-port FWD SCSI card

All of these except for the FWD HBA work with LVD and SE devices, including SE

Asynchronous, Fast, and Ultra devices, and LVD Ultra160, and Ultra320 devices. Only the

FWD HBA directly supports HVD devices

. All of these support attachment of up to 15 SCSI

devices per port at varying device speed capabilities up to the speed of the HBA.

For supported OS versions, platforms, boot support and other details see the SCSI HBA Support

Matrices at http://docs.cup.hp.com/en/netcom.html#SCSI%20Host%20Bus%20Adapters.

For associated device support go to www.hp.com/go/serverconnectivity and click on

StorageWorks support matrices.

The newest and highest performing pSCSI HBAs are the A7173A PCI-X dual-port Ultra320 SCSI

card and the AB290A combo card. The A7173A is intended to replace the A6829A, and the

AB290A is intended to replace the A5838A. The dual SCSI ports on these Ultra320 cards

support a combined speed of up to 640 MB/s and capability of up to 100,000 I/Os per

second. The Ultra160 cards support approximately ½ the raw performance capability per port

of the Ultra320 cards, the Ultra card about ¼, and the FWD cards about 1/16 of the raw

performance. For details on the A7173A performance, go to http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-

0688/5991-0688.pdf. For details on the AB290A performance see the recently published

white paper at http://docs.hp.com/en/6620/Castorwhitepaperbook.pdf.

The A7173A and AB290A support domain validation technology to verify that the physical

connection (cables, connectors, targets, etc.) is capable of handling the negotiated transfer

speed. Domain validation technology automatically compensates for marginally performing

hardware by reducing the communication speed, thus preserving data integrity even when

conditions do not permit transfers at the speeds negotiated between the initiator and the target.

Then the user is notified to correct the problem.

As of the AR0505 release of HP-UX 11i v2, as mentioned in Section 2.1.1 above, HP-UX plans

to deliver self-healing technology in the Ultra320 driver which will detect and compensate for

additional data integrity problems using CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) error detection

technology. The user is notified so the problem can be corrected and the speed adjusted back

up again.

2.4.2 RAID Controller Cards

The following RAID Controller cards are currently available on HP-UX:

− A9890A – PCI-X 2-port Ultra320 RAID Controller

− A9891A – PCI-X 4-port Ultra320 RAID Controller

− A7143A –PCI 4-port Ultra160 RAID Controller

These cards are part of the Smart Array (SA) RAID Controller family of products. The A9890A

uses the SA6402 Controller, the A9891A uses the SA6404 Controller, and the A7143A uses

the SA5304 Controller. Each of these are supported on HP-UX 11i v1 and v2 with the MSA30

SB and DB disks across a variety of HP 9000 and Integrity servers.

HVD devices can be used with the LVD HBAs via an LVD-to-HVD converter, as discussed in Section 3.2.