Teresa,
With Solaris you need the gigabit trunking software to
be able to logical combine nic cards to create a fat
network pipe.  That's Solaris 9 or 10.  If I'm not
mistaken, the software can be obtained for no cost.

--- Teresa Biehler <tpbsys AT RIT DOT EDU> wrote:

> Is there any significant difference between Solaris
> 9 and 10 related to
> their ability to handle multiple NICs?  
> 
> -T
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Legato NetWorker discussion
> [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU]
> On Behalf Of Robert Maiello
> Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 9:43 AM
> To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
> Subject: Re: [Networker] sizing a Sun server for a
> 4xLTO3 tape library
> 
> That is well summed up Vernon, the key concept being
> 2 LTO3
> drives (and even 2 LTO2 drives) can "eat" a gigabit
> NIC all
> on there own.
> 
> That said, I'd like to add that looking at PCI buses
> for the HBAs and/or
> 
> NICs I'm always hard pressed to pick a particular
> SUN server up to the 
> task.  Perhaps others can reccommend one?  The ideal
> server being one
> where every card is connected to a seperate high
> speed PCI bus.
> 
> Also, it has been seen that Solaris 9 or Solaris 10
> is needed to get 
> the throughput out of mulitple NICS.
> 
> Robert Maiello
> Pioneer Data Systems
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, 14 Feb 2006 15:34:25 -0800, Vernon Harris
> <harriv00 AT YAHOO DOT COM> 
> wrote:
> 
> >Ty,
> >Rule of thumb for sizing a sun server to drive 4 x
> >LTO3 drives would be as follows:
> >
> >   For each LTO-3 drive you would need a minimum of
> >approximately 1.25GHZ of processing power.  That
> would
> >include the processing power necessary to handle 1
> >gigabit ethernet nic card.  But to adequately drive
> >the 4 LTO-3 drives if you backup methodology is lan
> >based backups, you should consider adding a second
> nic
> >card and trunking the 2 nic cards together to
> create a
> >fat network pipe.  Otherwise max throughput would
> be
> >limited to approximately 80-90MB/sec, which is the
> >practical thruput limit of gigabit ethernet. If you
> >add a second nic, you will need 1.5GHZ of processor
> >power per drive.
> >
> >Practically, most servers can never generate enough
> >i/o to keep LTO-3 drives spooling without
> shoeshining
> >the drives.  The installations that I've seen with
> >LTO-3 drives configured attached to solaris servers
> >have not expererienced performance issues on the
> >servers.
> >
> >One important problem that I've seen repeatedly on
> Sun
> >Servers attached to the fabric is with Sun Branded
> >qlogic hba's using the leadville driver stack. 
> This
> >is manifested with link offline errors in the
> >/var/adm/messages file which causes the hba to go
> >offline and the connected drives and libraries to
> >disappear from the fabric.  This condition can only
> be
> >resolved by rebooting the server.  Stick with
> native
> >emulex or qlogic cards.  Otherwise you are asking
> for
> >major problems.
> >
> >--- Ty Young <Phillip_Young AT I2 DOT COM> wrote:
> >
> >> All,
> >>
> >> I apologize in advance if this topic has been
> >> covered.  I looked through
> >> the archive using a variety of search terms
> without
> >> successful results.
> >>
> >> We have determined that a 4 x LTO3 tape library
> will
> >> work well in our
> >> environment.    Our Sun SEs, however, claim that
> >> attempting to drive such a
> >> library with one host (i.e. where all four LTO3
> >> drives are fiber-connected
> >> through a switch into the server) is asking for
> >> trouble and that we really
> >> must consider driving it with two, in order to
> split
> >> up the gigE network
> >> bandwidth requirements as well as the FC HBA
> >> bandwidth requirements.
> >> Their argument seems to be based on the
> theoretical
> >> maximum sustained I/O
> >> that a Sun server backplane can handle, at 1.2
> >> GB/sec.
> >>
> >> What I'm not understanding is how one calculates
> I/O
> >> across a server.
> >> Given that a server takes network traffic (input)
> >> and routes it to the tape
> >> drives (output), is it accurate to basically
> double
> >> the aggregate
> >> write-rate of a bunch of tape drives (read and
> >> write) and then double that
> >> number again to factor in performance with drive
> >> compression ?
> >>
> >> My head is so full of numbers and stats at the
> >> moment that I cannot think
> >> straight and I need some help.   Thanks!
> >>
> >> -ty
> >>
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