Using APA to Build a Screaming Fast Network Server Connection for HP-UX 11i v2 and v3

-- Page 14 -- Hewlett Packard
BENEFITS:
• APA offers single-server fail-over support with MC/Service Guard levels of protection
at a fraction of the cost.
• The increased bandwidth with APA ensures that customers achieve the highest levels
of connectivity.
• Combining APA with MC/SG enables mission critical customers to provide
redundancy and availability at both the network and system level. This will ensure
that application downtime is minimized and current or new business transactions are
not lost.
Auto-configuration and Administration Tools
The shortfall in the current labor markets of seasoned network administrators is placing
a heavy strain on IT staffing and personal budgets. A proven way to reduce these costs is
by using technology that anticipates human error so as to automatically prevent
catastrophic failures wherever possible.
Can you relate to this? Half of your system is down and slowly coming back on line. You
go to your best engineer for answers. The initial response to your hasty request is a
glaring look that creeps out at you from across the top of a well-chewed pair of reading
glasses. “It was the new hire, but in all honesty, anyone could have made that mistake.”
The rest is just unpleasant details.
Should human intervention be required, automated solutions must offer intuitive
problem-resolution tools designed for use by novice and experts alike. APA’s Auto-
Configuration features (i.e. IEEE 802.3ad LACP) and Administrative Tools are designed
to minimize IT staffing demands and training costs.
Auto-Configuration: The IEEE 802.3ad Standard
The IEEE 802.3AD Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) became an official IEEE
standard in late March 2000. The primary benefit of this standard is that it allows
automatic and error free creation of Link Aggregates with practically no human
intervention. By simply enabling the protocol on the Server and the Switch you can
automatically create Link Aggregates which are guaranteed to be configured with no
errors or additional human intervention.
Once the Link Aggregate is configured, the automatic link fault detection and recovery
feature as well as the load balancing of network traffic will automatically take affect.
Another key benefit of LACP is that it allows bandwidth to be added (or reduced) without
any interruptions to live applications. It does this by allowing an infinite number of Fast
Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet ports to be automatically combined into (or removed from)
a single logical “Fat-Pipe”. This is done without interrupting the application(s) (or
clients) using the Link Aggregate.
HP’s APA software for HP 9000 servers was the first product to fully support this
standard on June 1, 2000.