Performance Highlights
8
Performance Highlights
During bidirectional traffic over multiple ports
of the A7011A/A7012A GigE cards, TSO
reduces service demand by up to 30%
while improving bidirectional throughput by up to
577 Mbit/s.
When installed in a 4-way HP rp4440 server, the A7011A and A7012A
cards provide exceptional networking throughput, connectivity, and reliability. Performance
is excellent even with both ports operating concurrently as well.
The GigE cards and TSO can be configured and used to best meet your business needs as
described in the “Suggested Use” section that follows.
Suggested Use
Using two A7011A or A7012A cards provides maximum failover. Where performance and
high availability are the highest priority, HP recommends that you use 2 cards in a
hot-failover configuration. See the next section for more.
Achieving High Availability with 2-Port Cards
To get high availability using the A7011A/A7012A, HP recommends the following:
•
When you use two 2-port cards together, you achieve excellent performance and high
availability. In the event of a system slot failure or other network failure, an alternate
data port can take over – maximizing system up time!
NOTE
The following recommendations assume that your systems are also
configured with failover software such as HP Serviceguard and Logical
Volume Manager. Consult
http://docs.hp.com
for full details on
configuring your products for high availability.
—
Connect each GigE port through a different network switch and ensure that the
switches are bridged to the same IP subnet. Failover between the two network paths
is managed by Serviceguard’s local network failover capability.
—
Connect the network ports on multiple rp4440s to a private subnet and use them for
a dedicated heartbeat for Serviceguard.
This configuration protects you from a failure of a single GigE port on either card, a
failure of either GigE switch, or the failure of any single network cable.
•
Use PCI-X mode as opposed to PCI mode. The primary PCI-X bus running at 133MHz
PCI-X with 64-bit bus width will yield the best results and the performance comparable
to that shown in this paper. HP tested the A7011A and A7012A cards in PCI mode, but
because PCI performance is lower than PCI-X performance, HP recommends using these
cards in PCI-X mode rather than PCI. In the rp4440 system under test, the PCI-X
high-performance or “dual rope” slots are slots 7 and 8. See “Test Configuration” for
more details on the PCI-X slots of the rp4440. Please see your sytems’ documentation for
the location of the PCI-X slots in your systems.
Summary of Contents for rp4440
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