SAN F20 Fibre Card Speed... How to find?

[LeePatto]

Hi All, how do I find out how fast my F20 HBA's are which connect to the switch via Fibre? I know the F20 supports up to 2GB Cards, but I cannot see anything indicating this physically on the cards. Is there a way to find this out using ESS Specialist? (Which incidentally, isn't all that special).

Many thanks

 

[JG5]

What kind of switch is it? I use Cisco MDS and each port will tell you what the connection speed is.

 

[LeePatto]

Hi there, thanks for your response. The switch is an old 1GB Switch, so if my F20 does have a 2GB card, it won't show. The switch is just one evolutionary step above the old two cups and a string. The F20 physically / visibly has nothing labeled, like speeds etc.. when I look at the HBA's. Even the the ESS Software, which is more apt to a Megalodon (Prehistoric Shark!) doesn't appear to have much functionality, surely there must be a way to find out this important information?

Many thanks

 

[p5wizard]

Well, if your SAN switch is 1GB/s, chances are 100 to 0 that all your FC adapters in your SAN are (clocked down to) 1GB/s, whatever their native speed may be...


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[LeePatto]

Yep, good point, but the plan is to upgrade the fabric to 4GB Switches, and I would like to see if we will gain a speed increase in SAN Disk access when this is done. If we only have 1GB Cards in the F20, we will need to look at upgrading this, but if it is 2GB, we will get the benefit when the switches are upgraded. So.... is there any way to tell?

Thanks

 

[p5wizard]

Are the F20's FC connectors SC (big) or LC (small)

If SC-type I think they will be 1GB/s, LC will be either 1 or 2GB/s

But I seem to remember that ESS model F20 only had 1GB/s speed available. It is all in proportion (RAM cache size, NVS write cache size, ...) ESS is getting a bit dated I'm afraid.


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[LeePatto]

Hi, they are SC, but the F20 does support 2GB Cards. So if they are SC it will be definately be operating at 2GB/s?

And yes, very dated, we have the DS Series which I much prefer, and have a bit more confidence in... ;->

Thanks again for your response

 

[p5wizard]

Well,

http://publibfp.boulder.ibm.com/epubs/pdf/f2aip08.pdf

only mentions FCP or FCP/FICON adapters with a bandwidth of 100MB/s for the ESS F10 or F20 - i.e. 1Gb/s

I think faster ports were only available on model 800 or 800 Turbo...


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[LeePatto]

It's possible we have the 800 Model... It's a 2105 F20, how can I tell if we have the 800?

Thanks

 

[p5wizard]

No, an 800 would be a 2105-800.

Check here

http://www.epoka.dk/Disk+systems.160.aspx

(broker site) for the different models and some of the old datasheets.


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[LeePatto]

Hello again, thanks for all your help and this link. It appears the actual card speed is a well kept secret, as there is no reference to it in the document. It simply states, "Up to 16 Fibre Channel Ports". It does however state that ESS Expert allows the "Tracking of capacity information and monitor performance". I cannot see this feature in the ESS Specialist Browser...

Thanks

 

[LeePatto]

Well.. the engineer was onsite to fix something else on this piece of "kit"... so I took the opportunity to ask. He did now know the speed or how to find it out. It was raised with IBM, who informed us on the speed, but not how they acquired the information.

 

[p5wizard]

1 or 2Gb/s ?

Well, the IBM support guys/gals or the LAB guys/gals can go in to the AIX boxes inside the ESS and those are just AIX (beit somewhat old) OSes where you can do lscfg or whatever to find out which card is which model...


HTH,

p5wizard