Specifications

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High Performance Trading/Algo Speed with Wombat Design and Implementation Guide
OL-15617-01
Appendix B—Building and Configuring Switches
Install Interface Cards in the Hosts
Install your HCA(s) in your hosts. For detailed instructions, refer to the installation guides that arrive
with your HCA. Install your NIC(s) in your hosts (if necessary).
Rack and Cable All Hardware
Rack and Cable all hardware as follows:
Step 1 Mount your switches, hosts, and any other chassis in your racks according to the plan that you developed
in
The Very First Thing That You Do: Plan, page 43.
Step 2 Connect all Ethernet and InfiniBand cables and label each end of each cable with the two ports that the
cable connects.
Step 3 Connect power cables.
Note All cables destined for ports 1 to 6 or 13 to 18 of a Cisco SFS 7000 switch should be routed through the
left side of the rack. All cables destined for ports 7 to 12 or 19 to 24 of a Cisco SFS 7000 switch should
be routed through the right side of the rack, if possible.
Note All cables destined for ports 1 to 6 for all LIMs of a Cisco SFS 7008 switch should be routed through
the left side of the rack. All cables destined for ports 7 to 12 of a Cisco SFS 7008 should be routed
through the right side of the rack, if possible.
For any racks that use SFS 7008/7012/7024 chassis, you should feed cables from the free space to the
left and the right through the free space in adjacent frames. (This presumes that you followed the
recommendation in
Figure 17.) This is the golden rule: 288 ports in a single rack is not a problem as
long as the cables can be fed horizontally without stress. Free space and slack management is the biggest
concern. To manage slack, Cisco recommends that you plug cables into core switches first, then plug
them into leaf switches. This gives you the opportunity to manage slack at the leaf switch instead of
focusing all cabling management at the core.
Write Down Your Cabling Connections
By now, you have named each of your switches and each of your hosts, and you have connected your
switches and hosts with Ethernet cables and InfiniBand cables. You have labeled your cables so that you
can select any port in your fabric and instantly identify the port to which it connects. Now, compile this
information in a text file that indicates how all of your devices are interconnected.
For the Ethernet ports on your hosts, label the first Ethernet port with the convention hostname-eth0 (e.g.
R2H01-eth0). Label the second Ethernet port on your host (if applicable) hostname-eth1 (e.g.
R2H01-eth1). For the InfiniBand ports on your hosts, label the first IB port with the convention
hostname-ib0 (e.g. R2H01-ib0). Label the second Ethernet port on your host (if applicable)
hostname-ib1 (e.g. R2H01-ib1).