[Sunhelp] Problem with E220 "redundant" power supplies

[Tony Alberti]

I have forwarded this email over to John Donnat at Sun (the FE who
explained the power supplies to me).  I'm waiting for his reply.
Your prtdiag negates what I was told, now I would like to hear the
truth.  Sorry for any misinformation. I will pass along Sun's reply
as soon as I get it.

Confused,
    Tony

----- Original Message -----
From: "James Lockwood" <james at foonly.com>
To: <sunhelp at sunhelp.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2000 12:43 AM
Subject: Re: [Sunhelp] Problem with E220 "redundant" power supplies


> On Wed, 21 Jun 2000, Tony Alberti wrote:
>
> > I have had a similar situation on an E250.
> > I asked one of the Sun FE's here in Chicago
> > to explain this.  I was told that the dual power
> > supplies in a 250 aren't truely redundant when
> > the machine is loaded. If you have two power
>
> This is wrong.  Dual powersupplies in a 450 are not redundant in a maximal
> configuration, but they are sufficient for a 250.
>
> > supplies and only 1 internal disk, there is enough
> > power in one power supply to handle the load,
> > so the redundancy works.   However when you
> > have all 6 HDs in a 250, that second power supply
> > uses about 75% of its output to drive the disk
> > backplane.   It is no longer redundant.
> > If the machine had truely redundant power
> > supplies, one could handle the load of the
> > system AND all 6 disks, so all you would
> > need for operation was 1, and the second
> > for redundancy.   Try to order an E250
> > from Sun configured for 6 internal disks
> > and 1 powersupply.  They will NOT
> > sell you that configuration.  If you
>
> This is incorrect.  I have 4 E250's with 6x18GB, 1GB RAM and dual 400MHz
> CPU's.  All were ordered in this configuration and came from Sun with one
> powersupply, with which they work fine.  The E250 is fully redundant with
> two powersupplies in all configurations.  Consult the h/w answerbook for
> power capacity planning information.
>
> koffing:/usr/platform/sun4u/sbin% ./prtdiag -v
> System Configuration:  Sun Microsystems  sun4u Sun (TM) Enterprise 250 (2
> X UltraSPARC-II 400MHz)
> System clock frequency: 100 MHz
> Memory size: 1024 Megabytes
>
> ========================= CPUs =========================
>
>                     Run   Ecache   CPU    CPU
> Brd  CPU   Module   MHz     MB    Impl.   Mask
> ---  ---  -------  -----  ------  ------  ----
> SYS     0     0      400     2.0   US-II    10.0
> SYS     1     1      400     2.0   US-II    10.0
>
> ...
>
> Disk LED Status:        OK = GREEN      ERROR = YELLOW
>                 DISK  5:    [OK]        DISK  3:    [OK]        DISK  1:
> [OK]
>                 DISK  4:    [OK]        DISK  2:    [OK]        DISK  0:
> [OK]
>
> ...
>
> Power Supplies:
> ---------------
>
> Supply     Status
> ------     ------
>   0          OK
>
> > want 2 internal disks and 1 power supply,
> > they will sell that to you (assuming the mainboard
> > had the same loaded config of 2 400mHz CPUS and
> > 2 gig memory in both configurations).
> > I suspect something similar probably occured in your 220.
> > Although there are less internal disks in a 220, perhaps the
> > power supplies are less as well.
>
> The 220 routes power from the sockets on the back differently.  Check the
> E220 h/w answerbooks for details.
>
> -James
>
>
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