SOFTWARE RELEASE NOTICE for the VS 300/7000/8000/10000/12000/14000/16000 and 18000 Series @70V68EW SCSI CACHING I/O Controller Microcode Version 01.02.00 January 2000 Copyright, Getronics 2000 DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES AND LIMITATION OF LIABILITIES The staff of Getronics, has taken due care in preparing this manual, however, nothing contained herein modifies or alters in any way the standard terms and conditions of the Getronics purchase, lease, or license agreement by which this software package was acquired, nor shall Getronics or its subsidiaries be liable for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising from the use of the software package, the accompanying manual, or any related manuals. NOTICE All Getronics Program Products are licensed to customers in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Getronics Standard Program Products License; no ownership of Getronics Software is transferred and any use beyond the terms of the aforesaid License, without the written authorization of Getronics is prohibited. 1.0 RELEASE ABSTRACT The 70V68EW IOC is a high-performance IOC for high-end VS systems, featuring 32 megabytes of on-board cache, 4 megabytes of battery protected write cache and two intelligent Device Adapters. Each Device Adapter interfaces with one SCSI bus. A SCSI bus has connections for up to 7 SCSI controllers (devices). Each SCSI controller may support up to 8 Logical Units. The microcode supports both asynchronous as well as synchronous transfer of data for all SCSI devices with equivalent support. Synchronous devices can achieve data transfer rates of up to 5 MB/second. The VS bus interface allows a data transfer rate of 3 MB/second for transfers from IOC to main memory, and 4 MB/second for transfers from main memory to IOC. A major feature of the microcode is disk caching. If a disk read is satisfied by data in the cache (a 'cache hit'), access to the disk is avoided, thus significantly reducing the time needed to process the IO. Disk write operations are completed to the VS as soon as the data has been written into the battery protected cache. Actual write to the disk takes place during otherwise idle periods. Error recovery includes support for handling a bus hang, bus malfunction or an unexpected bus reset. Bad block remapping is supported at the device level for all SCSI disk drives. Streaming tape drives as well as start-stop tape drives are supported. Double-buffering is used for block-mode writes to tape to speed up the overall transfer of data. Start-stop and streaming tape drives are run in buffered mode. Support is included for the processing of a Device Routing Table (DRT). NOTE: This microcode rev is linked with protocol routines version 01.09.00. 2.0 PRE-REQUISITES AND DEPENDENCIES 2.1 Hardware Pre-Requisites Any disk or tape device with a valid WANG copyright can be supported. 2.2 SOFTWARE PRE-REQUISITES Module Version VS/OS 07.53.00 or greater To IPL from a SCSI disk, SYSCON version 3.31.00 or greater must be installed on the SCU. 3.0 RESTRICTIONS AND SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS Each device attached to the 70V68EW IOC must have a valid WANG copyright. The SCSI IOC must occupy position (ID) 7 on the SCSI bus. If a disk device on the IOC is used as the system (IPL) volume, that disk device must be configured according to the default configuration (please see page A-1). Users of 2259V1 streamers should be aware that while we guarantee default (high) density recording mode for tapes written from BOT, tapes appended to will be written at the tape's previously recorded density, be it low or high. This is due to the unit's upward compatibility with the manufacturer's earlier streamer, which we do not support. Although system IPL is functional from either of the supported RAID units (2277V1 and 2277V2), we do not recommend doing so. In the unlikely event that a reconstruct would be necessary, the system would have to be IPLed from a volume other than the volume requiring reconstruction. The RAIDSTAT utility will not function otherwise. The following restrictions exist if either of the supported RAID units' (2277V1 and 2277V2) location on the SCSI bus is Target x, Lun y, where y is greater than 0. 1) The volume's use as an IPL disk is not possible based on the description on page A-1 for the default configuration, as it applies to system IPL. 2) SYSCON's Easy IPL display (PF8) will never show the volume name. 3) VS/VM virtual SCSI support will be non-existant for volumes physically connected in this manner. 4.0 ENHANCEMENTS Support for new devices; DLT8000 Tape, Sony 5.1 GB Optical. Support for a dismount/flush command to ensure data integrity for removable media. 5.0 PROBLEMS CORRECTED SINCE RELEASE 01.00.00 Fixed a problem when switching between Fixed and Variable recording modes on tape devices. Corrected Exabyte 8500 handling. Corrected problems associated with write protected tapes. Linked with new DA microcode which corrected problem using short differential cables with LightSpeed. Fixed a problem which resulted in device timeouts under heavy loading. Corrected problems leading to crash code 040F, 050F and 060F. 6.0 KNOWN ANOMALIES None 7.0 MEDIA CONTENTS LIBRARY = @SYSTEM@ MODULE VERSION DESCRIPTION @70V68EW 1.02.00 70V68EW SCSI Caching I/O Controller Microcode 8.0 INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS GENEDIT must be run to configure the SCSI controller. The microcode file (@70V68EW) should then be copied to the system library on the system volume. IPLing with the config file created by GENEDIT completes the process. A-1 In order to IPL from a disk on the SCSI IOC, the disk must be configured in a way that is consistent with the default configuration for the SCSI IOC. A relabel of the disk is also required in order to install IPLTEXT on the volume. The following is the default configuration for the IOC: LDN Port Target LUN 00 0 0 0 01 0 1 0 02 0 2 0 03 0 3 0 04 0 4 0 05 0 5 0 06 0 6 0 07 0 7 0 (reserved for IOC itself) 08 1 0 0 09 1 1 0 0A 1 2 0 0B 1 3 0 0C 1 4 0 0D 1 5 0 0E 1 6 0 NOTE: The default configuration supports only Logical Unit Number (LUN) 0. Therefore, the system (IPL) volume must occupy LUN 0. Example 1 Suppose that the system (IPL) volume is target 1 on port 0 of the SCSI IOC. In our default configuration, the Logical Device Number (LDN) for this device is '1'. Therefore, in the GENEDIT configuration file for this IOC, the system volume must be configured as unit '1' on the IOC, the second entry in the device configuration screen. Example 2 Suppose that the system (IPL) volume is target 5 on port 1 of the SCSI IOC. In our default configuration, the Logical Device Number (LDN) for this device is 'D'. Therefore, in the GENEDIT configuration file for this IOC, the system volume must be configured as unit 'D' on the IOC, the 14th entry in the device configuration screen. IF THE SYSTEM VOLUME IS NOT CONFIGURED ACCORDING TO THE ABOVE RULES, THE IPL WILL FAIL.