Compaq ProLiant 8500 Setup And Installation Manual page 99

Novell NetWare
Supported PCI Functionality
Compaq PCI Hot Plug support under Novell NetWare provides hot-
replacement, hot-upgrade, and hot-addition for most PCI adapters. To protect
hardware investments, the Novell PCI Hot Plug architecture leverages the
modularity of NetWare to minimize the changes required of third-party
adapter board software. To take advantage of PCI functionality, networking
and storage device drivers must be written to current specifications. The
NetWare Peripheral Architecture (NWPA) specifies the driver architecture for
storage devices. The Novell Open Data-Link Interface (ODI) specification
documents the driver architecture for network devices. Drivers that are
compliant with these specifications will be compatible with PCI Hot Plug and
will continue to work in non-hot-plug environments.
Software Components
Novell uses a central component, the Novell Event Bus, to facilitate
communications between different software modules. The Event Bus is
implemented as a NetWare Loadable Module (NLM), allowing you to
implement PCI Hot Plug on existing versions of NetWare. Listed below are
the components of the PCI Hot Plug architecture for NetWare:
Novell Event Bus (NEB)
Novell Configuration Manager (NCM)
OEM Specific System Bus Driver (SBD)
Novell Configuration Manager Console (NCMCON)


Device drivers


Other boards


Installation tools
Installing PCI Support
Compaq provides PCI Hot Plug support for NetWare via the Novell Software
Support Diskette.
For more information, refer to the PCI Hot Plug Administration Guide on the
Compaq Systems Reference Library CD, the NetWare online documentation,
or the Compaq White Paper "Hot Plug Expansion on Compaq Servers in
Novell NetWare Environments" (located at www.compaq.com).
Installing Hardware Options 4-31