Re: qalogic 2340 failover configuration

[bob flynn <bob flynn s3group com>]

Message: 4
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 06:42:30 -0500
From: Ed Wilts <ewilts ewilts org>
Subject: Re: qalogic 2340 failover configuration
To: "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (Nahant) Discussion List"
	<nahant-list redhat com>
Message-ID: <20051018114230 GB5860 www ewilts org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 10:43:15AM +0100, bob flynn wrote:
  

I have a question regarding configuring qalogic 2340 cardsin failover mode.

I have two of the above fibre cards supporting a storagetek diskarray,
which is providing non-bootable partitions from a single host. There are
no switches in the configuration, the fibre cards are directly connected
to the diskarray.

My understanding is the default installation of the driver ( from
qla2x00-v7.05.00-1.noarch.rpm ) via qlinstall installs the cards in in
persistant mode, which precludes failover.

So, can anyone confirm this, and if so, what are the correct steps to
install and test under a failover configuration.
    

Arjan confirmed this.  Red Hat supported this in RHEL 3 and even though
Qlogic has failover support in the driver they ship, Red Hat decided to
pull the functionality in RHEL 4.  <insert expletive here>.

You can either not use the driver's failover functionality or you can
download the driver from qlogic's web site.

Red Hat recommends that you use the dm-multipath stuff instead.  This is
brand new functionality that was just introduced in Update 2.

        .../Ed

  

So if running in a RH 3 environment ( which I am at the moment ), my options are;

 - stick with RH driver or
 - install qlogic driver

from what you are saying, this will work and I can shy away from dm-multipath for the moment. I assume from what you are saying about being just introduced in U2 that it is not available as a possible configuration for Taroon ( as provided by Redhat ).

I was flicking through the archive of this list, and a question is bugging me.

With a qlogic driver, can I achive failover or load balancing. but not both at the same time. I guess throughput and availability are wanted, but if I cannot have both, then I need to make a call.

-Bob

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