HP SVA V2.1 System Administration Guide

2 Setting Up Display Devices
This chapter describes how to set up display devices to work with SVA.
Setting up display devices is often an important system management task. Because the display
devices are frequently supplied by a vendor other than HP, you may need to rely on the display
vendor for help. You likely will refer to the vendor display documentation for specific display
settings.
2.1 Task Overview
You must carry out several tasks to display images correctly on display devices using SVA:
• Physically install display nodes and display devices. See Section 2.2.
Plan how you want the display devices arranged, for example, the physical layout and
assembly, and how you want to use your display nodes to drive your display devices. It
also involves cabling the display nodes to the display devices.
• Configure Display Nodes and Display Surfaces. See Section 2.3.
This task involves using two SVA tools:
— Node Configuration Tool: Use this tool to define the tile orientation for individual
display nodes.
When the cluster is built by HP Manufacturing, display nodes are configured with a
default of having a single display device per display node. If a cluster uses single display
nodes to drive multiple display devices (a one to several relationship), you need to use
the Node Configuration Tool. The output of a single display node is defined as a display
block. The Node Configuration Tool is used when a display node drives more than one
tile, that is, uses one or two graphics cards and/or multiple ports on a card. A tile is
assumed to be the image output from a single port of a graphics card.
The tool also lets you change the role of a node, for example, from render to display
and vice versa.
— Display Surface Configuration Tool: Use this tool to assemble the output of one or more
display nodes in a particular spatial orientation. This orientation is needed to define
Display Surfaces.
One or more display blocks are assembled into a Display Surface using the Display
Surface Configuration Tool.
• Configure SVA for Stereo or Exotic Mono Displays. See Section 2.4.
This task is likely to be required for stereo displays and more exotic mono displays. Typical
desktop display devices (monitors and flat panels) are supported by default by SVA.
2.2 Physically Install Display Nodes and Display Devices
Graphics cards in display nodes must be cabled correctly to the display devices so that multi-tile
output is routed in the correct order to the individual tiles that make up a multi-tile display. In
effect, correct cabling ensures that each sub-image on a particular tile is in the right place in a
multi-tile display such that the entire image is assembled properly. This is most complicated in
the case of xw9300 or xw9400 display nodes because of their support for one or two graphics
cards, each of which is capable of driving one or two displays. However, even xw8200, xw8400,
DL140 G3, and DL145 G3 nodes can drive two displays from a single graphics card.
2.1 Task Overview 27