Vital System Resources - Sun Microsystems Sun Fire V890 User Manual

open to service similar devices used elsewhere in the system. To be considered
detach-safe, a driver must be able to perform a basic Device Driver Interface/Device
Kernel Interface (DDI/DKI) function called DDI_DETACH. Any driver that does not
support the DDI_DETACH function is called detach-unsafe.
Sun Microsystems offers a variety of hot-pluggable PCI cards that use detach-safe
device drivers. For an up-to-date list of Sun PCI cards that use detach-safe drivers,
contact your local Sun sales representative.
Note – Many third-party drivers (those purchased from vendors other than Sun
Microsystems) do not support the DDI_DETACH function. Sun Microsystems
suggests that you test these driver functions during the qualification and installation
phases of any third-party PCI card before using it in a production environment.
While it is possible to detach a PCI card that has detach-unsafe drivers, it is a fairly
complex procedure. To do so, you must:
1. Stop all usage of the detach-unsafe drivers on the card.
2. Stop all usage of other devices in the system that share the same detach-unsafe
drivers.
3. Manually close all instances of the affected drivers and unload all of those
drivers.
For more information, see
Drivers" on page 19.

Vital System Resources

You cannot dynamically detach a PCI card that controls vital system resources unless
alternate paths to those resources are available. The alternate paths must be available
through a different PCI card or an on-board controller integrated into the system
motherboard or system I/O board. Before detaching the card, you must switch
control of the vital resources over to the alternate path (note that some multipathing
software may handle this automatically). Examples of vital system resources include
the system's boot disk, swap space, and primary network interface.
Some cards cannot be detached. A PCI card is not detachable if it controls a boot
drive for which no alternate path is available.
If possible, the system's swap space should reside on two or more disks attached to
controllers on separate boards. For example, some of the swap space might be
controlled by a PCI host adapter card, while the rest could be controlled by the
system's on-board controller. With this kind of configuration, a particular swap
"How to Remove PCI Cards That Use Detach-Unsafe
Chapter 1 Introduction to Dynamic Reconfiguration 5