HP Auto Port Aggregation (APA) Release Notes for HP-UX 11i v1 and v2 September 2006

1 HP APA Overview for HP-UX 11i v1
This chapter provides information about the HP-UX 11i v1 (B.11.11.20) May 2005 release of HP Auto Port
Aggregation (APA) and LAN Monitor software.
This release of HP APA now supports Proactive Failover Support (PFO) for LAN Monitor failover groups,
TSO (TCP Segmentation Offload), and 64-bit statistics.
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 Serviceguard with certain conditions. See the HP Auto Port Aggregation (APA) Support
Guide for more information.
LAN Monitor
The LAN Monitor mode of HP APA provides a failover capability and configuration tools similar to
Serviceguard; however, LAN Monitor does not support HP Serviceguard. In the event of link failure, LAN
Monitor automatically migrates the data flow from the primary link to one of the standby links in the
failover group.
New Features in This Release
The B.11.11.20 version of HP APA:
• Supports the TSO (TCP Segmentation Offload), aka Large Send, feature if an aggregate is created
with Ethernet cards that all support TSO or if the active port in a LAN Monitor failover group supports
TSO.
• Supports 64-bit MIB (RFC 2863) statistics if all the interfaces within a link aggregation or failover
group support 64-bit statistics.
• Supports proactive failover for LAN Monitor failover groups. Proactive failover is a cost-based failover
policy in which each port in a failover group is assigned a cost. With this policy, the active port of a
failover group is always the link that is the most efficient at carrying traffic. Efficiency is measured
in terms of normalized port cost, which is the assigned port cost divided by the port's current link
speed. The lower the normalized port cost, the higher the efficiency.
• Supports the logging of status messages to the syslog.log file.
• Enables you to add and remove DOWN ports to and from a link aggregation, and to create and delete
a failover group that has a DOWN port.
• Enables you to choose the MAC address of the first LAN port or of the first LACP-enabled port as
the LACP System ID.
See the HP Auto Port Aggregation (APA) Support Guide (HP Part Number J4240-90035) for more information
on the new features and how to use them.
Known Problems Fixed in This Version
Table 1.1 lists the known problems and fixes in this release of HP APA B.11.11.20.
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