Fibre Channel Tachlite Driver

Summary of Change

The changes to the Fibre Channel Tachlite driver in the HP-UX 11i v1.6 release are:

In addition, these modifications to the Fibre Channel Tachlite driver have been effected:

Details of Change

The Fibre Channel Tachlite driver allows IPF (Itanium Processor Family) users running HP-UX 11i v1.6 with the A6795A FC PCI 2 Gb adapter to connect to fabric using Fibre Channel switches between the host and storage devices. The use of fabric enables better performance, connectivity and fault isolation. Users can take advantage of the higher link speed of the A6795A 2 Gb Fibre Channel HBA when used with 2 Gb capable devices. The A6795A auto-negotiates 1Gb or 2Gb speed and can be used in the users' existing 1Gb Storage Area Network (SAN) infrastructure.

The adapter is supported on the following IPF platform servers:

Fibre Channel boot and dump capabilities are available for the A6795A adapter on HP rx5670 and rx2600 servers only. Fibre Channel boot and dump is not supported on rx4610 and rx9610 servers.

	NOTE: The A5158A Tachlite PCI adapter is not supported in HP-UX 11i v1.6. If you are migrating from HP-UX 11i v1.5 to v1.6, HP will replace your A5158A adapter with an A6795A 2Gb Tachlite PCI adapter. Call your HP representative for the details, and reference Service Note No. A5158A-04

In this version, the Fibre Channel Tachyon driver is not supported and is removed from the software. The driver diagnostic tool, fcmsutil, has been modified to remove options specific to Tachyon and to add the new vpd option. This option lists Vital Product Data (VPD) on the A6795A HBA. It provides such information as the product description, part number, engineering date code, serial number, etc. The vpd option applies only to the A6795A adapter.

The command for retrieving VPD information is:

fcmsutil <device filename> vpd

An example of the information that displays is:

 V I T A L   P R O D U C T   D A T A
                ---------   -------------   -------
 
 Product Discription    :'A6795A 2Gbps/1Gbps Fibre Channel 4X PCI HBA'
 
 Part number            :'A6795-62001'
 
 Engineering Date Code  :'A-4142'
 
 Part Serial number     :'A56466014504'
 
 Misc. Information      :'PW=15W'
 
 Mfd. Date              :'A-4142'
 
 Check Sum              : 0x46
 
 EFI version            : '000000'
 
 Asset Tag              :'NA

The Fibre Channel 11i v1.6 driver supports FC SNIA HBA API (Fibre Channel Storage Network Industry Association Host Bus Adapter Application Programming Interface). The SNIA HBA API is a C library interface that provides both a common HBA API library for all HP-UX HBA vendors and a vendor-specific library for HP's A6795A Fibre Channel adapter. SNIA user applications are packaged with the HP-UX 11i v1.6 driver depot and installed when you install the driver. Intended users of this API are programmers who create applications for managing SANs networks.

For more information about SNIA HBA API, refer to the Fibre Channel SNIA HBA API Programmer's Guide, J2635-90015, E1201 at http://www.docs.hp.com . Following is an updated flowchart of the Call Order Sequence for HP's vendor library that appears in Appendix A of this manual. The flowchart was updated to reflect a change in the call order sequence and is different from the flowchart in the manual.

Figure 2-1 Call Order Sequence for HP's Vendor Library

	NOTE: The above graphic is only available in the PDF version of this document. The latest version of the HP-UX 11i v1.6 Release Notes is found on the Instant Information CD and on the web at http://docs.hp.com/hpux/os/11iV1.6.

Impact

The size of the HP-UX 11i v1.6 Tachlite driver depot is approximately 4 Mb.

Compatibility

There are no compatibility issues.

Performance

There are no performance issues

Obsolescence

Not applicable.

Documentation

The manpage, fcmsutil(1M), has been updated to reflect the removal of Tachyon specific commands and the addition of the vpd option for A6795A.