[SunRescue] SPARCserver+SSA Questions (lots :)

[Bjrn Ramqvist]

sparcy wrote:
> 
> Hey Bjorn + other sun rescuers.
> 
> Sorry for the late reply, I've been working my butt of the last couple of
> days :(

I know what you mean. I have been working my ass off extra-time, 15-20+
extra hours/week.
I'm beginning to notice the difference in efficiency daytime. :-(

> > Another thing which might confuse you is that the SM61 and SM81 have a
> > huge heatsink which covers both the CPU and the cache controller,
> > assuming (visually) 'just one CPU'. Atleast some (or almost all) of the
> > SM41 and SM51 have two seperate heatsinks, one on each chip, which could
> > confuse things. (visually looking as 'two CPUs')
> > Sounds like you have the 1000-model, without the 'E'.
> 
> Hmmm, well there are 2 black 'circles' for each CPU (e.g. the cpu and the
> cache controller) and then there are 2 additional silver 'plates' - these
> are the extra heat sinks ? (since they are quite far away from the actual
> chip)

They might be heatsinks for the voltage controlles, which might get
awful hot because of these CPUs.
I really have no idea.

> All disks are Seagate Barracude except those 3 which are Quantum disks,
> this probably explains it too, I always found Quantum disks to be of
> poor quality. (I crashed 2 quantum bigfoot's in one year in my PC)

I have had no problems with Quantum drives, although Cuda's here at work
tend to die one by one now. :-(
All Digital/Compaq disks are now Quantum Atlas IV disks, so I guess
they've temporarly left Seagate for a while. (RZ26 1GB were Quantums,
RZ29B 4GB were Seagate Barracudas and now RZ1EF 18GB are Quantum
Atlas-series)

I have a Seagate ST34520N sitting in my SGI Indy at home, and I've never
been happier! :-)

> > Have you seen the drives in the front, behind the plastic cover and that
> > metal plate?
> > There you have a SCSI-controller which hangs directly on the XDBus, thus
> > providing a "systemwide" controller without depending on either
> > systemboard. Looks like it has a serial-port too. Neat stuff.
> 
> I'm not sure, what I thought (but this doesn't seem to be the case) that
> the controllers were actually located somewhere in the tray, but I can't
> find anything there (except disks) - should I look elsewhere, or am I
> just missing the obvious (again :)

You're absolutely right. The SCSI-controllers (with an external
SCSI-port) are indeed sitting on the motherboards. If you check at the
front, where the CDROM sits, there is this "internal" SCSI-controller,
which holds the CDROM + one 5.25" device, along with maximum 4 x 3.5"
disks. Many SCSI-controllers. :-)

> > Please report back to our S.H.R (Sun Hardware Reference) maintainer.
> > This is useful info.
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean, who's the S.H.R. ?

Sun Hardware Reference.
Check http://sun-ref.sunhelp.org/

I'm trying to gather info, documentation, tips & tricks and all sorts of
stuff, to hand over to Gregory Leblanc, the maintainer of the 'new' Sun
Hardware Reference.

> > I haven't found any sticker either, just looked at the FEH, telling me
> > that there were two models with either MicroSPARC or MicroSPARC-II. I
> > think I even have the "-110" mark on my arrays, which further proved the
> > fact.
> 
> Yeah, the ssaadm told me it was a 110.
> 
> To be exact :
> 
> SSA110, Rev 1.0, firmware Rev: 3.6

Congratulations. You are a proud owner of the 'faster version' of the
SSA. :-)

> > As for now, we've invested in a Compaq (Digital) RAIDarray 8000 with
> > FC-AL interface, hubs and some servers. Cool to the the massive
> > throughput of this baby. Just formatting a RAID-set keeps the controller
> > busy with 45MB/s throughput. :-)
> 
> Wanna trade ?
> 
> :)

Equipment for $55.000? I'd bet my boss would love that. :-)

> I always loved Digital (still got a little cluster of 4 digital PC boxes
> running, in fact this email is going through one of them, the mail server)

We have one Digital PC-box, and somewhere around 100+ Alphas
(workstations and about 10 servers), all running VMS and Medusa CAD
software. Infact, Digital claimed that we have Swedens biggest
VMS-cluster. :-)

> Again, thanx for all the great info, it's really cool to get this kind
> of help!

No problem. There aren't that many guys here with SS1000+SSAs, so it's
nice to be a little helpful with someone unexperienced.
:-)

	/Regards, Bjorn