Summary: JBOD via FCAL

From: Lewis E. Wolfgang (wolfgang@nosc.mil)
Date: Mon Jun 14 1999 - 12:51:44 CDT


I had only two responses to my JBOD FCAL question, I guess that
FCALs aren't in wide use yet.

According to Sun you have to use Solaris 2.5.1 hw 11/97 or newer
for the FCAL interface to work. We use 2.5.1 FCS. Sun indicates
that there is no patch for this, the only solution is to upgrade.

Since we were going to upgrade this summer anyway to get ready
for Y2K, this won't be a significant burden. I will provide
another summary when the upgrade is finished and I can fully
test the interface.

Thanks to Thomas Carter who said:

     We haven't actually implemented an FCAL storage solution, but in
     discussions with different vendors, most say that FCAL is not really a
     "standard". For example, we discussed upgrading our EMC raid box
     from FW SCSI to FCAL, and they said their FCAL was not compatible with
     Sun's and we would have to add seperate controller cards. YMMV.

and also to Richard Felkins who added:

     When I worked on a different JBOD recently, I found
     format wouldn't see anything beyond disk 1. Had to
     modify the LUN tables in /kernel/drv/sd.conf to add
     all the new logical units.

     Using format should at least show you the first disk.

Here is my original qustion.

Subject: Need help with FCAL JBOD
Author: "Lewis E. Wolfgang" <wolfgang@nosc.mil> at MEMCPSMTP
Date: 6/4/99 10:36 PM

In an effort to save the taxpayers some money I'm trying
to interface a JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) chassis with
a Sun Enterprise 4000 using FCAL (Fiber Channel Arbitrated
Loop). I've upgraded the Sun's I/O board and installed
the FCAL optical modules. I've also installed an eight-bay
JBOD chassis with one disk installed. Once I get it working
I'll fill the extra slots. The JBOD is the new Trimm box
with the fancy swooping handles on the drive carriers.

Everything is hooked up, and after a reboot -r I get this
with dmesg:

ID[SUNWssa.soc.driver.1010] soc0: host adapter fw date code: Wed Jan 17
20:34:591996
SUNW,soc0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xd offset 0x10000 Onboard device sparc9 ipl 5

So far, so good. But now what? The disk doesn't seem to
show up anywhere. Where do I go from here?

The JBOD has an address register, what should it be
set at to work with the Sun?

I'd appreciate any help from anyone who's been down this
route before. We have a Sun hardware support contract, but
they would just laugh at me if I asked about JBODs!

BTW, we're running Solaris 2.5.1 at this time.

Thanks in advance,
Lew Wolfgang
 



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