Administrator's Guide

Planning the Fabric

Preliminary Considerations

Chapter 2 11

Preliminary Considerations

Before assembling a fabric physically, do the following to address all of

the appropriate issues:

Step 1. Read Chapter 1, “Overview of the HyperFabric Product,” on page 1, to

get a basic understanding of HyperFabric and its components.

Step 2. Read this chapter, Planning the Fabric, to gain an understanding of

protocol speciﬁc conﬁguration guidelines for TCP/UDP/IP and HMP

applications.

Step 3. Read “Conﬁguration Overview” on page 69, “Information You Need” on

page 71, and “Conﬁguration Information Example” on page 74, to

understand how to conﬁgure the fabric.

Step 4. Decide the number of nodes that will be interconnected in the fabric.

Step 5. Decide the type of HP 9000 system for each node (for a list of supported

HP 9000 systems, see the HyperFabric Release Notes available at

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/netcom/index.html#HyperFabric.

Step 6. Determine the network bandwidth requirements for each node.

Step 7. Determine the number of adapters needed for each node.

Step 8. Determine if a High Availability (ServiceGuard) conﬁguration will be

needed. If ServiceGuard is used, each node should have at least two

adapters.

Step 9. Decide the topology of the fabric.

Step 10. Determine how many switches will be used based on the number of

nodes in the fabric. The only conﬁguration that can be supported without

a switch is the node-to-node conﬁguration (HA or non-HA). HyperFabric

supports meshed switches up to a depth of four switches, starting with

the following versions of the HyperFabric software:

• For HF2 switches: software versions B.11.00.11, B.11.11.01, and

B.11.23.00.