Sun Microsystems Fire 880, Owner'S Manual

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146 Sun Fire 880 Server Owner’s Guide • August 2001
PCI Cards
On Sun Fire 880 systems, PCI cards are hot-pluggable, while the Remote System
Control (RSC) card is
not hot-pluggable.
Hot-plug operations for PCI cards involve Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR). DR is an
operating environment feature that provides the ability to reconfigure system
hardware while the system is running. DR lets you logically attach or detach
hardware resources within an active operating environment. The main benefit of DR
is that a service provider can add or replace hardware resources with little or no
impact on normal system operations.
PCI hot-plug procedures may involve software commands for preparing the system
prior to removing a device, and for reconfiguring the operating environment after
installing a new device. In addition, certain system requirements must be met in
order for hot-plug operations to succeed.
For information about system requirements and limitations, and for detailed PCI
hot-plug procedures, refer to the
Sun Fire 880 Dynamic Reconfiguration User’s Guide ,
which is available on the Solaris on Sun Hardware AnswerBook . This AnswerBook
documentation is provided on the Sun Computer Systems Supplement CD for your
specific Solaris release.
Caution –
You can hot-plug any standard PCI card that complies with PCI Hot-Plug
Specification Revision 1.1, provided a suitable software driver exists for the Solaris
operating environment, and the driver supports hot-plugging as described in the
Sun Fire 880 Dynamic Reconfiguration User’s Guide . The Sun Fire 880 system must be
running the Solaris 8 7/01 operating environment or a subsequent release that
supports Sun Fire 880 PCI hot-plug operations. Do not attempt to hot-plug a PCI
card until you are certain that its device drivers provide the proper support;
otherwise, you may cause a system panic. For a list of Sun PCI cards and device
drivers that support PCI hot-plug operations, see the
Sun Fire 880 Server Product
Notes .
Note – DR works in conjunction with (but does not require) multipathing software.
You can use multipathing software to switch I/O operations from one I/O controller
to another to prepare for DR operations. With a combination of DR and multipathing
software, you can remove, replace, or deactivate a PCI controller card with little or
no interruption to system operation. Note that this requires redundant hardware;
that is, the system must contain an alternate I/O controller that is connected to the
same device(s) as the card being removed or replaced. The alternate controller must
reside on a different PCI card or be integrated into the Sun Fire 880 system
motherboard or I/O board. For additional details, see “About Multipathing
Software” on page 148.