Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes Sun Microsystems, Inc. 4150 Network Circle Santa Clara, CA 95054 U.S.A. 650-960-1300 Part No. 817-5626-12 May 2004, Revision A Send comments about this document to: docfeedback@sun.
Copyright 2004 Sun Microsystems, Inc., 4150 Network Circle, Santa Clara, California 95054, U.S.A. All rights reserved. Sun Microsystems, Inc. has intellectual property rights relating to technology embodied in the product that is described in this document. In particular, and without limitation, these intellectual property rights may include one or more of the U.S. patents listed at http://www.sun.com/patents and one or more additional patents or pending patent applications in the U.S.
Contents 1. Documentation and Miscellaneous Information 1.1 Upgrading the BIOS on a B200x Server Blade 1.2 Before Installing Solaris x86 Onto a Blade 1.3 Miscellaneous Information 1.4 2. Linux 1–2 1–2 Using N1 Provisioning Software 1–2 1.3.2 Using the Sun Fire B10n Content Load Balancing Blade 1–3 1.3.3 Downloading New Firmware for Chassis Components 1–3 Viewing the Latest Documentation for the Chassis and Its Components 4 1.4.1 Documentation in this Release 1.4.
3.1 3.2 3.3 4. 5. 6. iv Preparing to Install Solaris x86 Onto a Blade 3–1 3.1.1 Solaris x86 Drivers and Documentation 3–2 3.1.2 Overview of the Solaris x86 Installation Process 3–3 Applying Mandatory Software Patches to the Solaris x86 Install Image 3 3.2.1 Downloading the B100x/B200x Mandatory Software for the Network Install Server 3–4 3.2.2 Creating a Network Install Server 3– 3–6 Issues Affecting B100x and B200x Server Blades That are Running Solaris x86 3–8 3.3.
6.4 6.3.1 Aggregated Links 6–10 6.3.
vi Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004
CHAPTER 1 Documentation and Miscellaneous Information These Product Notes contain important information about this release of the Sun Fire B1600 blade system chassis. This is the first release of the product to support Enterprise Linux version 3.0 and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8, running on B100x and B200x server blades. This chapter contains the following sections: ■ Section 1.1, “Upgrading the BIOS on a B200x Server Blade” on page 1-2 ■ Section 1.
1.1 Upgrading the BIOS on a B200x Server Blade To run Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 3.0 or SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 on a B200x server blade, you must first upgrade the BIOS to version 1.1.32. This version of the BIOS is available from the following website: http://wwws.sun.com/software/download/network.html For information on how to upgrade the BIOS on B200x blades with Linux installed, see Section 2.2, “Upgrading the BIOS on B200x Server Blades” on page 2-3 in these Product Notes. 1.
1.3.2 Using the Sun Fire B10n Content Load Balancing Blade The Sun Fire B10n Content Load Balancing Blade is now available to provide load balancing across server blades in the Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis and other horizontally scaled Sun platforms. To use the B10n Content Load Balancing Blade, you need to upgrade the firmware on the System Controller to version 1.1 or later.
1.4 Viewing the Latest Documentation for the Chassis and Its Components For the most up-to-date documentation, including the most up-to-date Product Notes, visit the following Sun documentation website: http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/Servers/ 1.4.1 Documentation in this Release Documentation for the Sun Fire B1600 blade system chassis and its components is provided on the CD supplied with a chassis or blade.
1.4.2 Documentation Errata ■ In the printed version of the Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis Compliance and Safety Manual (817-2571-10), the contact details given for Zuheir Totari are out of date.
1-6 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004
CHAPTER 2 Linux This chapter contains the following sections: ■ Section 2.1, “Installing Linux Onto a B100x or B200x Blade” on page 2-2 ■ Section 2.2, “Upgrading the BIOS on B200x Server Blades” on page 2-3 ■ Section 2.
2.1 Installing Linux Onto a B100x or B200x Blade To install the Linux operating system onto a blade, you must first build a PXE boot installation environment. The software required to build a PXE boot installation environment is available on the CD supplied with the blade. To install Linux on B100x or B200x server blades you will need the following: ■ The Sun Fire B1600 Platform Documentation, Drivers, and Installation CD.
2.2 Upgrading the BIOS on B200x Server Blades To run Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 3.0 or SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8, service pack 3 on a B200x server blade, the blade must have BIOS version 1.1.32 installed. This version of the BIOS is available from the following website: http://wwws.sun.com/software/download/network.html You can upgrade the BIOS on the blade using the biosupdate utility.
2. Check the version of the BIOS currently running on the blade, to establish whether the upgrade is necessary: modprobe mtdbios cat /proc/BIOS BIOS Vendor: AMI BIOS Version: P1.1.32 BIOS Date: 01/19/2004 Manufacturer: Sun Microsystems Product: Sun Fire B200x rmmod mtdbios 3. Copy the BIOS image from the beta website to a known location on the blade. 4. Run the biosupdate command: biosupdate bios2p.rom-032.bin The blade prompt returns when the update is complete.
2.3 B100x and B200x (Linux) Server Blade Issues The following problems have been observed on both B100x and B200x server blades: ■ 4868095: Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1 does not support layer 2 VLANs The Advanced Server kernel (version 2.4.9-e.3) does not support layer 2 VLANs. This means that the sunconfig utility is not installed on blades running Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1. If you are using blades with Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1 installed, you must configure the switch to use only untagged VLANs.
■ 4991972: B200x blade locks into a repeated “boot net” loop following a BIOS update The CMOS footprint may change between revisions of the BIOS. If this is the case, and the CMOS is not reset to its default values during the blade reboot following a BIOS update, the CMOS configuration may become corrupted and result in repeated network boots. To avoid this problem, after updating the BIOS on a B200x blade, reset all CMOS settings to their default values when you next reboot the blade.
CHAPTER 3 Solaris x86 This chapter contains the following sections: ■ Section 3.1, “Preparing to Install Solaris x86 Onto a Blade” on page 3-1 ■ Section 3.2, “Applying Mandatory Software Patches to the Solaris x86 Install Image” on page 3-3 ■ Section 3.3, “Issues Affecting B100x and B200x Server Blades That are Running Solaris x86” on page 3-8 Note – If you intend to use the Solaris x86 CD media (instead of the DVD media), you need to use a Solaris x86 system to read the CDs.
3.1.1 Solaris x86 Drivers and Documentation For the first full release of the Solaris x86 software to support B100x or B200x blades, the documentation and some mandatory patches required for Solaris 9 (12/03) are available on the web. Note – The Sun Fire B1600 Blade Platform Documentation, Drivers, and Installation CD that ships with the blade and chassis does not (at the time of writing) contain documentation or patch software for running Solaris 9 x86 on a B100x blade.
3.1.2 Overview of the Solaris x86 Installation Process 1. Set up a network install image for Solaris x86 using the Solaris 9 (12/03) Media Kit. For instructions, refer to the Solaris 9 Installation Guide supplied with the Media Kit. Note – If you intend to use the Solaris x86 CD media (instead of the DVD media), you need to use a Solaris x86 system to read the CDs. For more information, refer to Chapter 12 of the Solaris 9 Installation Guide.
Further information about installing the Solaris 9 x86 operating system is available in the Solaris 9 Installation Guide supplied with the Solaris 9 media kit. The document can also be downloaded from http://docs.sun.com. 3.2.1 Downloading the B100x/B200x Mandatory Software for the Network Install Server 1. On the Solaris system you are going to use as the Network Install Server, make a directory called /var/tmp/blades by typing: # mkdir -m 755 /var/tmp/blades 2.
4. At the Solaris prompt on the system you are going to use as the Network Install Server, unzip the files you have downloaded. To do this, type: # cd /var/tmp/blades # unzip mis.259-4174-11.zip 5. Proceed to “Creating a Network Install Server” on page 3-6.
3.2.2 Creating a Network Install Server To install the Solaris x86 software over the network onto a blade, you must create an install server. This section describes how to set up an install server on the same subnet as the server blade you are about to install, by copying the Solaris x86 CD or DVD images to the hard disk drive on the system that is to perform the role of Network Install Server.
4. Add the patches and packages automatically to the network install server image by typing: # ./modify_install_server -d install_dir_path where install_dir_path is the path to the install image on your install server. 5. You can now proceed to Chapter 10 of the Sun Fire B100x and B200x Server Blade Installation and Setup Guide to perform the operating system setup steps for your blades.
3.3 Issues Affecting B100x and B200x Server Blades That are Running Solaris x86 The known problems listed in this section have been observed to affect both B100x and B200x server blades. They are presented in three groups: 3.3.1 ■ Section 3.3.1, “Issues for Which You Must Apply a Workaround or Perform an Operational Procedure” on page 3-8 ■ Section 3.3.2, “Error Messages That Can be Safely Ignored” on page 3-13 ■ Section 3.3.
4873161: Need Support for Soft Poweroff in Solaris x86 Solaris x86 does not currently support power button events generated through ACPI. This means that a poweroff command issued on the system controller (sc> poweroff sn) will not cause an orderly shutdown of the blade’s operating system before powering off the blade.
4856440: Require hostid to Be Set From BSC on Solaris x86 B100x and B200x The value of the hostid for blades that are running Solaris x86 is different from the hostid value programmed into the B1600 chassis for the blade’s physical location. When Solaris x86 is installed for the first time onto a blade, the hostid value is generated by the install process. It is generated as a random unique value, once for the life of the blade.
4975579 Bootpath Line Missing After PXE Install With Single Solaris Partition During an interactive Solaris installation the install program will prompt you to select the partition layout of the disk. If you choose to layout the disk with a single disk partition that combines x86boot and Solaris partitions, then when the blade is rebooted the ’Device Configuration Assistant’ screen will be displayed and you will be prompted to select the boot device.
4922593: Link Messages Seem to Contradict IPMP State During a Switch Reset If you have IPMP configured on a blade and you reset the chassis’s integrated switch, you will see an error message that appears to contradict the IPMP configuration of the blade. The console output during the reset will possibly display several link up messages while the switch is physically in the process of resetting (see below). There will be no corresponding link down messages.
3.3.2 Error Messages That Can be Safely Ignored This section lists error messages that will be be observed during a network installation or reboot. In all cases these messages can be safely ignored. They have no impact on B100x and B200x blades. 4903388 consconfig complains on servers with no frame buffer When the B100x and B200x blades boot you will see the following message: SunOS Release 5.9 Version Generic_112234-11 32-bit Copyright 1983-2003 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Despite this message, the blade will perform a Jumpstart installation if you have configured it to do so. Select the type of installation you want to perform: 1 Solaris Interactive 2 Custom JumpStart Enter the number of your choice followed by the key. Alternatively, enter custom boot arguments directly. If you wait for 30 seconds without typing anything, an interactive installation will be started. Select type of installation: <<< starting interactive installation >>> Booting kernel/unix...
4871718: bootstrap complains about devices that have been disabled in the BIOS On the B100x you will see the following message about /dev/diskette0 during a reboot or PXE boot: CLIENT MAC ADDR: 00 03 BA 29 F0 DE GUID: 00000000 0000 0000 0000 000000000000 SunOS Secondary Boot version 3.00 255.255.255.0 DHCP IP: 129.156.205.163 GATEWAY IP: 129.156.205.
4321917: ACPI Resource Conflicts Unnecessarily Reported During the booting of a B200x blade you might see the following message briefly displayed: Warning: Resource Conflict - both devices are added NON-ACPI device: PNP0C01 NON-ACPI device: PNP0C01 Memory: 9FC00-9FFFF, 3FFF0000-3FFFEFFF, 3FFFF000-3FFFFFFF, Memory: 9FC00-9FFFF, 3FFF0000-3FFFEFFF, 3FFFF000-3FFFFFFF, FEC00000-FECFFFFF, FEE00000-FEE00FFF, FFF00000-FFFFFFFF ACPI FEC00000-FECFFFFF, FEE00000-FEE00FFF, FFF00000-FFFFFFFF device: PNP0C01 ACPI device:
BCM5704s Port 0 (first interface): base MAC address (as reported by sc>showplatform -v command) device Port 1 (second interface): base MAC address + 2 BCM5704s device Port 0 (third interface): base MAC address + 1 Switch 0 Second Interface Third Interface Switch 1 Port 1 (fourth interface): base MAC address + 3 FIGURE 3-1 First Interface Fourth Interface The Network Interfaces on a B200x Blade The B200x BIOS displays the network interfaces as shown in FIGURE 3-2.
The network interfaces are displayed by the DCA in the order in which it discovers them when it probes the hardware.
If you are configuring IPMP network redundancy, note that the achievement of network resilience (enabling a blade to recover from different hardware and network failures) depends upon each IPMP group containing one connection to each switch. A configuration in which both interfaces in a group of two were connected to the same switch would not continue to transport network traffic if that switch failed.
3-20 Sun Fire™ B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes • May 2004
CHAPTER 4 SPARC Solaris This chapter contains the following sections: ■ Section 4.1, “Installing SPARC Solaris Onto a B100s Server Blade” on page 4-2 ■ Section 4.
4.1 Installing SPARC Solaris Onto a B100s Server Blade To install the Solaris 8 HW 12/02 (Build 5) Operating Environment onto a B100s blade, follow the instructions in the Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis Software Setup Guide, the Solaris 8 Installation Guide (806-0955), and the Solaris 8 Advanced Installation Guide (806-0957). 4.
■ 4726915: SunVTS will not start because of missing XML libraries To run SunVTS you need to load the SUNWlxml and SUNWlxmlx packages. These are not loaded by default in Solaris 8, therefore you must add them manually from the supplemental CD supplied with Solaris 8 HW 12/02. They are located in the following directory on the CD: XML_Libraries_2.4.12/Product.
■ 4811241: When you install Solaris with “Entire distribution plus OEM support” and error message appears If you install Solaris with “Entire distribution plus OEM support" onto a server blade, the following error message will appear on the console and in the log file maintained by the Solaris install process (there is no effect on the operation of the server blade and no corrective action is required to be taken by the user): (/var/sadm/system/logs/install_log): /a/var/sadm/pkg/SUNWidecr/install/postinsta
CHAPTER 5 System Controller This chapter contains the following sections: ■ Section 5.1, “Upgrading the System Controller (SC) Firmware” on page 5-2 ■ Section 5.2, “What To Do If You Lose Your Password for the System Controller” on page 5-2 ■ Section 5.
5.1 Upgrading the System Controller (SC) Firmware To support Sun Fire B200x blades in a Sun Fire B1600 blade system chassis, you must be running System Controller firmware version 1.2. To perform the upgrade of the System Controller firmware, follow the instructions in the Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis Administration Guide (Chapter 10). 5.
3. At the sc> prompt, set a new password for the default user (admin). To set a new password for user admin, type: sc>password Enter new password:***** Enter new password again: ***** New password set for user admin successfully sc> The password you specify can be up to eight characters long. It must begin with an alphabetic character, and it must contain at least one lower-case alphabetic character. You can use any of the following characters in the password: ■ Alphabetic ■ Numeric ■ Period (.
5.3 System Controller Software Issues 5.3.1 System Controller Firmware 1.
■ 4866668: When the message ’Dynamic FRUID packet discovery failure recovered’ shows in the logs for a blade, it is possible that some fault events will be missing or only partially described. This problem can occur if the System Controller is reset immediately after an event has been reported on the serial console. In other words, it happens if the System Controller has not completed writing the information to its event logs when the reset is performed.
5.3.3 System Controller Firmware 1.0 The following known problems applied to release 1.0 of the System Controller firmware (they are fixed in release 1.1): ■ 4810785: Recovery from output rail faults is not correctly reported under some circumstances. A PSU output rail fault is correctly reported when a fault occurs, but recovery from the fault may not be correctly reported under certain circumstances.
CHAPTER 6 The System Chassis’s Integrated Switch This chapter contains the following sections: ■ Section 6.1, “Switch Firmware Issues” on page 6-2 ■ Section 6.2, “Issues Affecting the Web Graphical User Interface to the Switch” on page 6-8 ■ Section 6.3, “The Term “Trunk” Meaning Either an Aggregated Link Or a Tagged VLAN Connection” on page 6-10 ■ Section 6.
6.1 Switch Firmware Issues The following known problems apply to the current release of the switch firmware for this product: ■ 4899178: Blade network traffic is only allowed through the IP filter on the VLAN configured as the management VLAN. The management VLAN is the VLAN that has been assigned an IP address to allow network access to the switch’s management interfaces (by default this is VLAN2).
■ 4871779: Blades are unable to receive multicast packets when IGMP querying is enabled. Multicasting on the switch does not work correctly if the IP address for the switch is not configured. This is only likely to be the case if the IP address is configured by DHCP and the DHCP process has failed for any reason.
■ 4876495: The port status is unstable There is a known problem with Spanning Tree (STP and RSTP) when it is used with aggregated links. When you have an aggregated link (a single link comprised of multiple ports) between two switches and you enable spanning tree on that aggregated link, the spanning tree control packets on the trunk link are not reliably received by the switch in the chassis.
The ports NETP0, NETP1, NETP4, NETP5, and SNP8 through SNP15 are on one switch chip. The ports NETP2, NETP3, NETP6, NETP7 and SNP0 through SNP7 are on the other. ■ Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol: the spanning tree mst commands are not available in the current release of the switch firmware. ■ The switch’s DHCP client identifier is set by the System Controller.
the System Controller next time the switch boots. The command to change the DHCP client identifier will be removed from the next release of the switch firmware. 6-6 ■ 4795640: Resetting with the factory default configuration causes provisioning errors Saving a copy of the switch’s factory default configuration file (or saving a modified copy of this file) generates errors if the switch is then rebooted with the saved copy specified as the startup configuration file.
■ 4773408: Spanning tree mode cannot be set when spanning tree support is disabled Setting the spanning tree mode for the switch can only be done when spanning tree is enabled. If you wish to set the initial spanning tree mode for the switch to a particular setting (for example in a configuration file) you must ensure that spanning tree is enabled before issuing the spanning-tree mode command.
6.2 Issues Affecting the Web Graphical User Interface to the Switch A graphical user interface (GUI) is available for configuring the switch. To access it, point a web browser at the host name or IP address you have used for the switch. The following problems have been observed during testing of the web GUI. Sun bug numbers are included where these are available.
■ 4828965: Disabling global GVRP state prevents dynamic VLANs from leaving ports If you disable GVRP globally on the switch by issuing the following command: Console(config)#no bridge-ext gvrp then VLANs that have been learned dynamically are not dropped even after the GVRP leave-all timer has expired (normally 10 seconds). These VLANS remain active on the ports that learned them, and you must remove them manually.
6.3 ■ The pages of the web GUI include options for configuring an HTTPS server. This functionality is not enabled in the current release of the switch firmware. ■ The web GUI (Switch Config=>Address Tables=>NETMGT Port ID) cannot display the MAC address table for the NETMGT port. This table is always empty. There is currently no workaround for this problem.
To implement a configuration combining the ports NETP0 and NETP1 into an aggregated link called channel group 1, you would type the following commands: Console#configure Console(config)#interface port-channel 1 Console(config-if)#exit Console(config)#interface ethernet NETP0 Console(config-if)#channel-group 1 Console(config-if)#exit Console(config)#interface ethernet NETP1 Console(config-if)#channel-group 1 Console(config-if)#exit Console(config)#exit Console# 6.3.
6.4 Setting up a Tagged VLAN Trunk With Cisco Switches There is a known problem with setting a switch port to trunk mode if that port is connected to a port on a Cisco switch also in trunk mode (note that we use the word “trunk” in the sense of a point-to-point link, not in the sense of an aggregated link). This is because of a standardization issue (Cisco comply with the Cisco standard whereas the switch in the blade system chassis complies with the IEEE 802.1Q standard).