NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/comp/os/vms/12880

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-28 | 2.6 KB

Xref: sparky comp.os.vms:12880 comp.sys.dec:4257
Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!yoyo.aarnet.edu.au!sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au!vsm.com.au!jeremy
From: [e-mail]
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms,comp.sys.dec
Subject: Booting via CI from a DSSI-connected system disk
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 29 Jul 92 19:35:39 GMT
Lines: 51

Here's one for the VAXcluster gurus out there.

My present contract is at a site which has a VAX 8200, an 8530 and a
6000-610 clustered together using CI, HSC etc, all booting off the one
HSC-connected system disk.

Recently they took delivery of a VAX 4000-500 which is to be included in
the above cluster, preferably booting off the same system disk as the other
3 nodes.  The 4500 shares a DSSI bus with the 6610.  It is expected that
within the next 18 months the 8200 and 8530 will be disposed of, and the
cluster will move to being entirely DSSI-based (or whatever else DEC have
up their sleeves, eg FDDI).

Possible configurations that I can think of are:

1) Buy a CI board for the 4500 and give it direct access to the HSCs
2) Move the system disk to the DSSI bus, and have the 6610 serve it to the
   8200 and 8530
3) Boot the 4500 from Ethernet
4) Have two system disks, one on HSC, the other on DSSI.

Option (1) would be a nice solution but the limited life of the other
CI-based machines would make it superfluous before very long.

Option (3) no good as the 4500 will be playing a very important role in the
cluster, and the Ethernet is too busy already anyway.

Option (4) is workable but there are enough management problems without
having to worry about maintaining two system disks.

As you may have deduced by now, the preference is for option (2) because it
gets the 4500 going without spending any more money on hardware.  But is it
possible?  We tried booting the 8530 from the 6610 (by editing  BCIBOO.CMD
to set up the appropriate register values for the 6610's CI node number and
system disk unit number) but very little happened.  We ran SHOW
CLUSTER/CONTINUOUS/INTERVAL=1 and saw that *something* (presumably the
8530) was trying to make a connection, but it didn't boot.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated; please send them via e-mail if
you can as my reading of this newsgroup is sporadic to say the best.  I
will summarize to the net when the replies are in.

Thanks,

        Jeremy Begg

  +----------------------------------------------------------+
  | VSM Software Services,  |  E-Mail:  [e-mail]    |
  | P.O.Box 801, Unley,     |   Phone:  [phone] (pager)|
  | South Australia 5061    |     FAX:  [phone]        |
  +----------------------------------------------------------+