ADSM-L

Re: Sun Solaris and Qlogic QLA2202FS (Sbus) and 3590-EIA

2002-02-15 08:04:41
Subject: Re: Sun Solaris and Qlogic QLA2202FS (Sbus) and 3590-EIA
From: Dylan Ryback <dryback AT HOME DOT COM>
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 06:01:26 -0700
I don't know how/if this will be an issue for you, but we bought the OEM
version of the Qlogic QLA2202F PCI card for use with an A5000 disk array.
We did this because the Sun-branded version of the card was about 3x as
expensive.  We later found out that you can not bind the native Sun Solaris
fibre channel drivers to the card and had to use the ones supplied by
Qlogic.  What this meant was that we had to define the SCSI targets in the
sd.conf file in order for the server to see the disks and it saw them as
just that, SCSI devices.  The downside was that since we had to use the
Qlogic drivers, the OS would not recognize the array as being a SENA, and
hence none of the tools that one would use to manage the array (e.g.,
luxadm) would work with it.  The fcode loaded on the Sun-branded PCI version
of the 2202F is different than the fcode loaded on the OEM versions of the
card, which is why the Sun SUNWqlc drivers wouldn't bind to the OEM version
(at least on Solaris 7).

If this even remotely sounds like it could be an issue, research the card
you are getting very thoroughly (if it's not Sun-branded) and see if there
are any patches/bug fixes on SunSolve.

HTH,
Dylan