HP Auto Port Aggregation (APA) Release Notes for HP-UX 11i v1, 11i v2, and 11i v3 January 2010 J4240-90050
3 HP APA Overview for HP-UX 11i v3
This chapter provides information about the HP-UX 11i v3 (B.11.31.40) December 2009 release
of HP Auto Port Aggregation (APA) and LAN Monitor software.
This release of HP APA now supports the assignment of fixed MAC addresses for link aggregates
and failover groups.
Auto Port Aggregation
HP APA is a software product that creates link aggregates, often called "trunks," which provide
a logical grouping of two or more physical ports into a single "Fat-Pipe." Network traffic is load
balanced across all of the links in the aggregation, which allows you to build large bandwidth
logical links into the server that are highly available and completely transparent to the client and
server applications.
In addition, HP APA provides automatic link failure detection and recovery, and optional support
for load balancing of network traffic across all of the links in the aggregation.
HP APA supports HP Serviceguard. See the HP Auto Port Aggregation (APA) Administrator's
Guide for more information.
Failover Group
HP APA supports the creation of failover groups (link aggregates in LAN_MONITOR mode),
providing a failover capability for links. In the event of a link failure, LAN Monitor automatically
migrates traffic to an available, standby link (port or link aggregate) in the failover group.
New Features in This Release
The B.11.31.40 version of HP APA:
• Supports the assignment of fixed MAC addresses for link aggregates and failover groups.
See the HP Auto Port Aggregation (APA) Administrator's Guide (HP Part Number J4240-90049) for
more information on the new features and how to use them.
Known Problems Fixed in This Version
Table 2.1 lists the known problems and fixes in this release of HP APA B.11.31.40.
Table 3-1 Fixes in the HP APA B.11.31.40 Release
DescriptionDefect ID
If the lanconfig.ascii file is empty when the system is booted, an error message
is displayed.
QXCR1000835803
The APA Statistics Monitor displays time without leading zeroes.QXCR1000890252
Invoking the nwmgr -S apa command causes the command to dump core.
QXCR1000954670
Known Problems and Limitations
This section describes the known problems and limitations as known to HP at time of publication.
If workarounds are available, they are included.
Limitation
The fixed MAC address feature is available only when you specify the new parameters using
the APA nwmgr or lanadmin commands, or the HP APA configuration files.
Auto Port Aggregation 17