Alacritech SES1001F User Manual Download Page 3

ii 

Alacritech Accelerator Users Guide  

covered by one or more Broadcom U.S. Patents.]  Alacritech does 
not have a license under the Broadcom Licensed Patents to 
implement certain claimed functionality with hardware and software 
not provided by Alacritech.  No license is granted under 
Broadcom’s patents expressly, by implication, by exhaustion or 
otherwise, to use or sell the acceleration technology in combination 
with any non-licensed hardware or software that is specifically 
designed to practice the Broadcom Licensed Patents.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part Number: 900099 Rev 5    11/05 

Summary of Contents for SES1001F

Page 1: ...Alacritech Accelerator Users Guide...

Page 2: ...s document is the official reference source for all revisions releases of these products until rescinded by an update Copyright 2000 2005 Alacritech Inc All rights reserved Alacritech the Alacritech l...

Page 3: ...aimed functionality with hardware and software not provided by Alacritech No license is granted under Broadcom s patents expressly by implication by exhaustion or otherwise to use or sell the accelera...

Page 4: ...es for monitoring and maintaining Accelerator performance and procedures for special server circumstances Chapter 4 Configuring Teaming and Failover supplies instruction on how to set up EtherChannel...

Page 5: ...on Select Interfaces 3 11 3 5 Configuring Advanced Properties 3 12 4 Configuring Teaming and Failover 4 1 4 1 Overview of Teaming and Failover 4 1 4 2 Recommended Order of Implementation 4 3 4 3 Windo...

Page 6: ...Alacritech Accelerator Users Guide v 6 6 Connectivity Problems 6 4 6 7 Performance Problems 6 10 6 8 Miscellaneous Problems 6 11 Appendix A Network Software License Agreement and Warranty A 1...

Page 7: ...1 Naming conventions The general term Accelerator for this release applies to all of the following products TCP IP Offload Engine TOE NICs TNICs 1000x1 Single Port Gigabit Server and Storage Accelera...

Page 8: ...SX Product names ending with a T specify unshielded twisted pair UTP copper connections and product names ending with an F indicate fiber based connections XT and XF products are PCI X based and ET an...

Page 9: ...que ASIC utilizes an Internet Protocol Processor IPP optimized for TCP IP protocol processing which delivers faster performance than general purpose CPUs SLIC Technology eliminates the burden of TCP I...

Page 10: ...he correct procedure The following types of situations are covered Installation during the installation of the Windows operating system Installation into an existing Windows system Updating the driver...

Page 11: ...ill discover additional Accelerators Note The drivers cannot be installed during the initial installation of Windows If you leave the Accelerator in your system through the entire Windows installation...

Page 12: ...Alacritech Accelerator Users Guide 2 3 3 If you accept the license agreement the Alacritech Accelerator Setup window will appear...

Page 13: ...g drivers that are not certified through the Microsoft WHQL process Most official drivers released by Alacritech have appropriate digital signatures while others including beta drivers do not A missin...

Page 14: ...will be prompted to reboot the system 2 2 2 Installation of the Accelerator with Port Aggregation 1 Insert your Alacritech Driver Installation CD into the system 2 In the Alacritech Accelerator Setup...

Page 15: ...2 6 Alacritech Accelerator Users Guide 3 If you accept the license agreement the Alacritech Accelerator Setup window will appear...

Page 16: ...appear This should only occur when using drivers that are not certified through the Microsoft WHQL process Most official drivers released by Alacritech have appropriate digital signatures while other...

Page 17: ...ritech Accelerator Users Guide 6 The Alacritech Accelerator Team Configurator Properties window will appear If you wish to configure teaming now consult Chapter 4 otherwise select Cancel in the teamin...

Page 18: ...rompted to reboot the system 2 3 Uninstalling the Accelerator 2 3 1 Removal of an Accelerator on a Windows 2000 System To remove an Accelerator from a Windows 2000 system follow this procedure Windows...

Page 19: ...Uninstall a device is selected in the selection list and click the Next button 5 After a few seconds a list of devices will appear Select the first appropriate Alacritech Accelerator or Alacritech iS...

Page 20: ...d in step 4 9 Shut down the computer and unplug the power cable Failure to do so may endanger you and may damage the adapter or computer Note Alacritech Accelerators use components that are sensitive...

Page 21: ...g the counters maintained under the SLIC object is the FastPath Data Rate This counter measures the percentage of TCP IP traffic that is being processed by the Accelerator as opposed to the traffic th...

Page 22: ...Performance Object field select Processor and in the Counter field select Processor Time and click the Add button Next in the Object field select Net and in the Counter field select Bytes Total sec al...

Page 23: ...3 In this example the CPU usage is over 50 black highlighted line The throughput is not optimal 75MB s and occasionally a drop in performance occurs This shows how a conventional NIC uses lots of CPU...

Page 24: ...select FastBytesTotal sec and click the Add button Next in the Object field select SLIC and in the Counter field select SlowBytesTotal sec and click the Add button FastBytes represents data moving th...

Page 25: ...B s SlowBytesTotal sec is non existent The percentage of FastPath data on a healthy network should be close to 100 This indicates that the Alacritech Accelerator is offloading 100 of the traffic from...

Page 26: ...astPath state as soon as the connection is established and will stay in FastPath state until the connection is closed As soon as an Alacritech Accelerator finds a problem with a connection such as a d...

Page 27: ...tBytesTotal sec Total bytes per second of data managed by the SLIC protocol stack FastPath data rate Percentage of FastPath data FastPath KB sec divided by total KB sec FastPath connections Number of...

Page 28: ...ing Adapter Diagnostics Diagnostics can be run on any Accelerator using the following procedure 1 Run the slicuser application from the Start Menu located under the Program Files folder in the Alacrit...

Page 29: ...display Passed for all results Click the Close button to exit the slicuser application 3 3 Updating Flash Code A new mechanism for flashing code on flash capable Accelerators is now provided through...

Page 30: ...ering the appropriate path to the flash files in the Flash Image Directory text box or by browsing to the appropriate path by clicking the Browse button 3 Once the path is specified click the Update F...

Page 31: ...oubleshooting and Support chapter To disable this feature use the following procedure Note Disabling SLIC TCP IP Offload will disable the performance benefits of the Accelerator on that interface This...

Page 32: ...atures such as jumbo frames VLAN tagging and TCP checksum offload To access the advanced configuration properties for an Alacritech Accelerator open Network Connections right click on an Alacritech Ac...

Page 33: ...Click on the Configure button under the General tab to modify advanced Accelerator features The Accelerator Properties dialog box will appear Click on the Advanced tab to access the properties that ar...

Page 34: ...the Advanced tab Jumbo Frames MTU When enabled this option provides support for large Media Transmission Units MTU The standard Ethernet MTU size is 1500 bytes The available options for this selection...

Page 35: ...abits per second unidirectionally 100Mbps Full Duplex copper based products only Sets data rate to a maximum of 100 megabits per second bi directionally 100Mbps Half Duplex copper based products only...

Page 36: ...l allow the Accelerator to perform segmentation offload for TCP data transmitted and received when the Accelerator has the Alacritech TCP Fast path driver option disabled Because Alacritech s SLIC Tec...

Page 37: ...Alacritech Accelerator Users Guide 3 17...

Page 38: ...lacritech s FastPath implementation works specifically with Alacritech s teaming and failover solution FastPath is not compatible with Microsoft s Network Load Balancing feature Alacritech offers seve...

Page 39: ...t typically what is used is a hash based on the source and destination Media Access Control MAC addresses If a port within a Gigabit EtherChannel fails traffic previously carried over the failed port...

Page 40: ...ion Because setting up a team correctly can be tricky and because the results of an invalid configuration can cause bizarre and unpredictable behavior we recommend the teamed connection be set up in t...

Page 41: ...d to configure teaming of multiple Alacritech Accelerators together It can be accessed by clicking the blue SLIC logo located in the Windows toolbar If the Alacritech Accelerator Team Configurator Pro...

Page 42: ...tor Users Guide 4 5 2 To configure a team select the interfaces you wish to team and click the New Team button 3 Once the team is created you must specify the type of teaming or failover the team will...

Page 43: ...hannel 802 3AD Select a type of team and click the OK button 4 If Cisco Gigabit EtherChannel 802 3AD is selected you must have a switch that supports one of these protocols If you do click the Yes but...

Page 44: ...restart your system If you wish to assign an IP address to the new teamed interface before rebooting select No Otherwise Click the Yes button to reboot and activate Alacritech SLIC TCP IP Offload Note...

Page 45: ...a team to operate at the same speed and duplex mode full or half duplex Ensure that all ports in a team have the same configuration on both ends of the link Alacritech s EtherChannel implementation do...

Page 46: ...Alacritech Accelerator Users Guide 4 9 3 Check the Alacritech SLIC Team Configurator box select the entry and click the Properties button...

Page 47: ...o add to the team and click the Add Member button Click the OK button when you are done Note When a team is established team member configuration information such as IP DNS and WINS assignments is not...

Page 48: ...erator Users Guide 4 11 5 If you wish to remove a team select the entry for the team and click the Dissolve Team button Removing the next to the last member of the team with the Drop Member button has...

Page 49: ...he Accelerator during a new install Replacement of the existing network adapter with a new Alacritech Accelerator in a previously configured system Addition of an Alacritech Accelerator to a previousl...

Page 50: ...Remove Hardware Wizard will not discover the Accelerator in you system on subsequent reboots since Alacritech drivers do not ship with Windows 5 2 1 Installation of an Alacritech Accelerator in a Wind...

Page 51: ...rator in a free slot If installing more than one Alacritech accelerator it may be necessary to remove other NICs 6 Close and latch the cover or PCI bus access door 7 Attach monitor keyboard and mouse...

Page 52: ...5 4 Alacritech Accelerator Users Guide...

Page 53: ...tool perfmon Because the Windows Powered NAS appliance does not typically have its own display it is necessary to access perfmon on the NAS appliance through Terminal Services It is not possible to r...

Page 54: ...adapters are installed in Windows Powered NAS appliances The Alacritech Accelerator Team Configurator utility is accessed by opening up a terminal services session on the NAS appliance and then by run...

Page 55: ...ch com html techsupport html Corporate http www alacritech com 6 2 README Files on CD ROM For more information about known issues open bugs or other integration problems with Microsoft Windows drivers...

Page 56: ...Setup cannot find OEMSETUP INF or OEMSETNT INF Make sure that you are attempting to install from the Adapters tab of the Network Control Panel Applet NCPA Ensure that you are specifying the proper dr...

Page 57: ...oning properly Run Diagnostics from NCPA See the procedure in Chapter 3 Contact Alacritech technical support for assistance This is probably the result of a malfunctioning adapter Event Log reports SL...

Page 58: ...lled during a concurrent system installation It can be fixed by performing a driver update See the Software Installation section in Chapter 2 6 6 Connectivity Problems This section covers problems wit...

Page 59: ...u have an Accelerator and another brand adapter installed on your system AND your network is configured such that the route from your system to the remote system is different than the route from the r...

Page 60: ...6 6 Alacritech Accelerator Users Guide...

Page 61: ...r the Accelerator or the switch or both are not receiving power the cable connection between them is bad or the link state is not set to 1000 Mbps 1000 Green A 1000 Mbps link has been established Off...

Page 62: ...ot sending or receiving network data ACT Flashing or On The Accelerator is sending or receiving network data Off Either the Accelerator or the switch or both is not receiving power or the fiber optic...

Page 63: ...On The port is connected to a valid link partner Green Flashing The Accelerator is sending or receiving network data ACT LNK Off The Accelerator is not connected to a valid link partner Off A 10 Mbps...

Page 64: ...lerator is sending or receiving network data ACT Off The Accelerator is not sending or receiving network data 6 7 Performance Problems This section covers issues surrounding the performance increase t...

Page 65: ...PX Windows 9x systems will use NetBEUI or IPX SPX by default if possible This can be prevented by ensuring that TCP IP is installed on the clients and then either removing NetBEUI and IPX SPX on the s...

Page 66: ...en stripped off by the network adapter Network monitoring software running on the computer itself will not work properly in this environment The two ways to handle this are Monitor your network using...

Page 67: ...regation software needs to be aware of the session layer interface provided by the SLIC TCP IP Offload The only trunking software compatible with the Accelerator s SLIC TCP IP Offload is the Alacritec...

Page 68: ...Start When uninstalling the Alacritech TCP Fast path driver an error dialog box appears with the message Could not uninstall the Alacritech TCP Fast path driver component The error is 0x800F020B This...

Page 69: ...t only in conjunction with at a minimum one Alacritech Accelerator You may not use copy modify rent sell or transfer the Software or any portion thereof except as provided in this Agreement You may 1...

Page 70: ...003 FreeBSD Inc All rights reserved Redistribution and use in source and binary forms with or without modification are permitted provided that the following conditions are met 1 Redistributions of sou...

Page 71: ...rrant or assume responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any information text graphics links or other items contained within the Software LIMITATION OF LIABILITY IN NO EVENT SHALL ALACRITECH...

Page 72: ...tionally imports and exports may be regulated by government agencies in other countries Intra country restrictions may be applicable regarding application use You agree that the distribution and impor...

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