Sun Storedge Traffic Manager; Hardware Watchdog Mechanism And Xir; Support For Raid Storage Configurations - Sun Microsystems Sun Fire V445 Server Administration Manual

Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager

Sun StorEdge™ Traffic Manager, a feature found in the Solaris OS and later versions,
is a native multipathing solution for storage devices such as Sun StorEdge disk
arrays. Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager provides the following features:
Host-level multipathing
Physical host controller interface (pHCI) support
Sun StorEdge T3, Sun StorEdge 3510, and Sun StorEdge A5x00 support
Load balancing
For more information, see
your Solaris software documentation.

Hardware Watchdog Mechanism and XIR

To detect and respond to a system hang, should one ever occur, the Sun Fire V445
server features a hardware "watchdog" mechanism, which is a hardware timer that
is continually reset as long as the operating system is running. In the event of a
system hang, the operating system is no longer able to reset the timer. The timer will
then expire and cause an automatic externally initiated reset (XIR), eliminating the
need for operator intervention. When the hardware watchdog mechanism issues the
XIR, debug information is displayed on the system console. The hardware watchdog
mechanism is present by default, but it requires some additional setup in the Solaris
OS.
The XIR feature is also available for you to invoke manually at the ALOM system
controller prompt. You use the ALOM system controller reset -x command
manually when the system is unresponsive and an L1-A (Stop-A) keyboard
command or alphanumeric terminal Break key does not work. When you issue the
reset -x command manually, the system is immediately returned to the OpenBoot
ok prompt. From there, you can use OpenBoot commands to debug the system.
For more information, see:
"Enabling the Hardware Watchdog Mechanism and Its Options" on page 114
Chapter 8

Support for RAID Storage Configurations

By attaching one or more external storage devices to the Sun Fire V445 server, you
can use a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) software application such as
Solstice DiskSuite™ to configure system disk storage in a variety of different RAID
levels. Configuration options include RAID 0 (striping), RAID 1 (mirroring), RAID
0+1 (striping plus mirroring), RAID 1+0 (mirroring plus striping), and RAID 5
102 Sun Fire V445 Server Administration Guide • September 2007
"Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager" on page
and Chapter 9
119. Also consult