Compaq's Pci Hot Plug Implementation Advantages; Highest Level Of I/O Availability - Compaq ProLiant 1000 White Paper

The Benefits of PCI Hot Plug Technology
Compaq's PCI Hot Plug Implementation
Advantages
Compaq's PCI Hot Plug implementation has multiple benefits including improved availability, an
industry-standard approach, customer investment protection, efficient manageability and
serviceability, and enhanced and future generation solutions.

Highest Level of I/O Availability

PCI Hot Plug technology represents a significant advance in fault-tolerant systems. PCI Hot Plug
technology provides for three major capabilities: hot replacement, hot upgrade, and hot
expansion.
Hot replacement is the process of removing a failed or failing PCI adapter and inserting an
identical adapter into the same slot while the server is operating.
Hot upgrade is the process of upgrading an existing adapter or the adapter's device driver
while the server is operating. This allows the customer to reconfigure an adapter without
bringing the system down.
Hot expansion is the process of installing an additional adapter into a previously empty slot
while the server is operating.
Redundant NIC and PCI Hot Plug
To provide an even greater improved availability benefit, PCI Hot Plug technology can be
combined with redundant controller configurations, such as Compaq Redundant Netelligent NIC
technology. Compaq Redundant Netelligent NIC technology allows two similar NICs to share a
single instance of device driver code. One NIC becomes the active network controller, and the
other NIC acts as a standby controller. If the active NIC fails, as shown in Figure 4, the network
traffic can be switched automatically to the standby NIC. With PCI Hot Plug, the failed NIC can
be replaced without shutting down the system. Thus, the end user can have continuous service
and the administrator can eliminate both planned and unplanned downtime.
Figure 4. Recovering from a network controller failure using PCI Hot Plug technology and Compaq
Redundant Netelligent NICs.
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