Symbios SCSI
NetWare Driver Installation

NETWARE

This file describes the features and use of the Symbios Logic SDMS device drivers for the Novell NetWare v3.12 and 4.xx operating system environments.

It is divided into the following sections:

Introduction

The Symbios Logic SDMS drivers for the Novell Netware operating system allow you to utilize a Symbios Logic SCSI controller or processor, controlled by a Symbios Logic SCSI BIOS, with NetWare. The SDMS software, coupled with a Symbios Logic SCSI controller or processor, provides a SCSI solution within the NetWare environment.

Separate drivers are provided for Novell NetWare v3.12, and Novell NetWare version 4.xx. The following information explains how to install and use the SDMS SCSI drivers for NetWare.

Features *

• Supports the ASPI interface
• Provides synchronous negotiation including Fast and Ultra (Fast-20) SCSI
• Supports multiple host adapters
• Supports multiple logical unit numbers (LUN)
• Large LUN support (larger than 7.844 GBytes) for devices with dedicated NetWare partitions and volumes

• Support for removable media devices including CD-ROM, Magneto Optical, and Bernoulli devices
• Supports retries on non-sequential access devices
• Extensive error reporting and handling for multi-LUN RAID support

Description *

There is a separate SDMS device driver and ASPI manager for each of two major releases of NetWare. For NetWare v3.12, the SDMS device driver is SDMSNET3.DSK, and the file NETASPI3.NLM is loaded if support for the ASPI interface is desired (this is required for devices such as tape drives). For NetWare v4.xx, the SDMS device driver is SDMSNET4.DSK, and the file NETASPI4.NLM is loaded if support for the ASPI interface is desired.

ASPI Support *

The Symbios Logic ASPI interface is provided by the NETASPIx.NLM drivers. NetWare, or third party applications, may use this interface to communicate with any SCSI-2 device attached to a Symbios Logic controller, including SCSI-2 tape devices.

Installing Your SDMS NetWare Drivers

Install NetWare as described in the Novell NetWare Installation Manual. The following information is provided to assist in the installation.

You can load these drivers only once. If changes are required (to reconfigure the driver options), you must remove the drivers and reload them with the new option settings. If these changes are permanent, and the drivers load automatically at server boot time, you must specify these options in the startup.ncf or autoexec.ncf file.

For An Existing Installation Of NetWare With SDMS Drivers Installed *

If your current SDMS NetWare drivers are version 3.05.00 or older, they are named NCRSDMSx.DSK and ASPICAMx.NLM. Replace the NCRSDMSx.DSK and ASPICAMx.NLM drivers with the ones supplied on the new Symbios Logic device drivers diskette.

If you intend the driver to auto load on NetWare boot, it is necessary to edit the startup.ncf or autoexec.ncf file and replace the line:

LOAD NCRSDMSx.DSK <options>

with

LOAD SDMSNETx.DSK <options>

where x is the version of NetWare you are using, and <options> are the command line options (if any) you intend to use.

If your current SDMS NetWare drivers are version 3.06.00 or newer, they are named SDMSNETx.DSK and NETASPIx.NLM. Replace the SDMSNETx.DSK and NETASPIx.NLM drivers with the ones supplied on the new Symbios Logic device drivers diskette.

No other actions are required to use these new drivers. You may want to review the command line options to insure you are using the best options for your configuration.

For NetWare v3.12 New Installations *

Note:

The SDMSNET3.DSK driver should work on a NetWare 3.11 server. However, this compatibility is neither tested nor supported.

SERVER

LOAD SDMSNET3 <options>

This command loads the main driver. Without this command, NetWare is unable to access the hard disk drive. If ASPI support is desired, also type:

LOAD NETASPI3

LOAD INSTALL

Continue with the installation according to the file server installation chapter in the Novell NetWare Installation Manual.

load NETASPI3.NLM

to the file after the line:

load SDMSNET3.DSK

For NetWare v4.xx New Installations *

B:

The SDMSNET4.DSK driver should appear as a selection. Select the driver.

load NETASPI4.NLM

to the file after the line:

load SDMSNET4.DSK

For NetWare v4.1x SFT-III Installations *

load NETASPI4.NLM

to the files after the line:

load SDMSNET4.DSK

For NetWare v4.1x NWOS2 Installations *

This is not a supported configuration

Command Line Options *

The SDMSNET3.DSK and SDMSNET4.DSK drivers have many tuning parameters. Following is a list of tuning parameters available, including the default option and a list of valid options. Following each parameter is a description of when to use a parameter, and any impact its use/disuse might incur.

If an option is specified but the assignment is not valid, then the default value is used. The SDMSNET3.DSK and SDMSNET4.DSK drivers are referred to in the remainder of this section as SDMSNETx.DSK, where x refers to the appropriate NetWare operating system version.

The options described below are used by placing the specified characters on the load command line for the SDMS driver. For example, if the Verbose Mode command line option is desired in NetWare 3.1X, the load command line should look like this:

load SDMSNET3 -v

IMPORTANT:

No spaces are allowed in specifying these command line options. Spaces are required between different command line options.

Using the Verbose Mode Option

This option shows all the command line option settings for this load of the driver.

Using the Help Mode Option

This option is specified on the command line for a brief description of each of the options available in the driver, as well as valid values for each option. If the -? or -h option is specified along with other options, the help screen is invoked, the other options are ignored, and the driver is not loaded.

Using the Tagged Queuing Option

Enabling this option results in the driver issuing tagged IO requests to the devices that support tagged queuing. Devices that do not support tagged queuing are not issued tagged requests. Depending on the drive controller, throughput of the device is increased by the use of queue tags. However, the optimal number of queue tags is based on the specific device type.

Using the Depth of Queue Tags Option

• Possible Impact: Used to optimize the performance of tagged queuing.

This option is valid only when tagged queuing (qtags) is enabled, which it is by default. Values possible for this parameter range from 0 to 128. 0 is equivalent to qtags=disable. While the actual depth of the queue depends on the specific drive controller. For single drives, values of about 10-30 are typically optimal. Sometimes a greater number is optimal for peripherals such as disk arrays. You should experiment with various qdepth values to determine the optimal performance for their particular setup. The optimal qdepth value is based on different aspects of the system, including but not limited to: the processor, the available memory, the disk drives, and other peripherals.

Note:

The driver supports a maximum of 128 qtags per controller at a given time. The driver may allocate fewer qtags per device if this limit is being reached.

Using the Queue Tag Type Option

• Possible Impact: Ordered type is required for certain devices to avoid IO starvation.

This option is valid only when tagged queuing (qtags) is enabled, which it is by default. Simple qtags are typically the preferred tag type. It is sometimes necessary to use ordered tags on certain devices to avoid IO starvation under extremely heavy IO loads such as a NetWare remirror process.

Using the Base Time-Out Option

If a device is slow, you should increase this value to insure the device has adequate time to respond to a command issued to it before the command times out.

Using the Sorting of Read Requests Option

• Possible Impact: Enabling normally yields increased performance based on the target device controller.

If the devices connected to a host adapter are of a non-buffered architecture, such as the Symbios Logic 6298 disk array, then sorting of reads may result in a performance degradation, since the absence of cache provides no benefit for sorted requests. In this instance you should disable the sort option. On most disk drives, an on-board cache allows for reading ahead of data, and by sorting read requests, the probabilities of achieving a cache hit are greatly increased, thus increasing the overall performance of the driver.

Using the Shared Interrupts Option

You should enable the shared interrupt option any time a PCI card other than a Symbios Logic controller is added to a system which assigns all PCI cards the same interrupt value. The added card must support shared interrupts. The driver automatically handles the case of more than one Symbios Logic host adapter sharing an interrupt.

Using the Wide SCSI Option

This option allows the user to disable support of wide SCSI when using a wide SCSI controller. Set this option to "disable" if a wide SCSI device is present on the system, but a narrow SCSI cable is connected somewhere on the bus between the wide SCSI host adapter and the wide device, thus prohibiting the transfer of wide data. If this option is set to "disable", the wide device still works, but all data transferred to/from the device is narrow (8 bit). The driver does not initiate a wide SCSI transfer request negotiation.

Using the Number of Error Recovery Retries Option

• Possible Impact: Setting this to 0 prevents the driver from retrying an IO in the event of an error.

If SCSI error conditions occur on a non-sequential access device, the driver retries an IO operation the set number of times before giving up and returning the IO to the caller with a failed status. Possible callers are NetWare or an application via the CAM or ASPI interface. If this option is set to 0, IOs are not retried in the event of an error condition.

Note:

Some SCSI error conditions (such as DATA PROTECT or ILLEGAL REQUEST) do not warrant a retry. Such conditions are reported but not retried, even for positive values of max_retry.

Using the Logging of SCSI Errors Option

If SCSI error conditions occur, the driver normally attempts to log a SCSI Error Report describing the event to both the console and the system log file SYS:SYSTEM\SYS$LOG.ERR. This information is valuable in determining when a device is having problems. It can indicate when a device is beginning to fail, providing an opportunity to replace the device before complete failure. With this option you can choose to specify where these messages are logged:

Console - the server console only; Syslog - the system error log; Both - both the server console and the system error log; or Off - the error messages are not logged anywhere.

Note:

This option affects the logging of serious SCSI errors only. Non-SCSI errors are still logged to both the console and system error log.

Using the Exclusion of Devices Option

Command line option: xcl=<device>[:device ...]

• Valid options: p,i,l (You may specify multiple devices with a colon separator)
• Default value: All devices recognized by the driver, i.e. no devices are excluded.
• where p is the Path designator, and is in the range 0 -7, i is the SCSI ID designator, and is in the range 0 -31, l is the LUN designator, and in the range 0 -7. The LUN parameter is optional. You may exclude multiple devices so long as the string does not exceed 35 characters in length and devices are separated by colons.
• Examples: xcl=1,2,3 to exclude LUN 3 of the device at SCSI ID 2 on Path 1.
• xcl=1,2,3:2,5 to exclude LUN 3 of the device at SCSI ID 2 on Path 1,
• and all LUNs on the device at SCSI ID 5 on Path 2
• Function: Allows for specifying that the driver not recognize certain devices.
• Possible Impact: Cannot directly access devices via the SDMSNETx.DSK driver.

This option is available to exclude recognition and direct access of specific devices by the SDMSNETx.DSK drivers. These excluded devices are not registered with the operating system for use by the driver. Other applications/drivers can then take over the control of such devices. This option is available for support of third party vendors who write their own SCSI control applications. You may exclude a maximum of five devices.

Using the Maximum Block Size for Concatenation Option

• Possible Impact: A high number may result in more data transferred in a single data phase.

Specify the maximum size block in Kilobytes which is written to disk in one data transfer phase. This ensures that when requests are concatenated, the maximum size of the concatenated request does not exceed the specified value. If individual requests are greater than this specified value, no action is taken.

Note:

The following three options affect the amount of memory used by the driver. For information on how memory is allocated by the driver, and to get an approximate feel for the amount of memory which is saved by invoking these parameters, refer to Memory Allocation under Important Additional Information at the end of this section. If the product of max_hbas * max_id * max_lun is small (less than 100), system performance may suffer. These values determine the number of IO buffers allocated by the driver. Allocation of too few may degrade performance.

Using the Maximum Host Adapters Option

• Possible Impact: If number is reduced, it may allow for reduction in the memory used by the driver. Reduction may also result in performance degradation.

This parameter is used to optimize the use of dynamically allocated memory by the driver. If your system has less than 8 Symbios Logic based PCI host adapters, including any Symbios PCI-SCSI controllers designed into the main board, this parameter allows you to reduce the total memory used for the driver.

Using the Maximum SCSI IDs Option

• Possible Impact: If number is reduced, may allow for reduction in memory used by the driver. Reduction may also result in performance degradation.

This parameter is used to optimize the use of dynamically allocated memory by the driver. If all the host adapters, including any SCSI controllers on the main board are connected to less than 31 devices, you can reduce the size of the dynamically allocated memory by setting this value to the maximum number of devices on any of the SCSI controllers.

Using the Maximum LUNs Option

• Possible Impact: If number is reduced, may allow for reduction in memory used by the driver. Reduction may also result in performance degradation.

Use this parameter to optimize the use of dynamically allocated memory by the driver. If less than 8 LUNs are used per Symbios Logic based PCI host adapter SCSI id, this parameter allows a reduction in the total memory used for the driver.

The Power Management Utilities

Power management support for NetWare is provided by two NLMs, PMMAKE.NLM and PMSCHED.NLM. Use one or both of these NLMs to activate power management of disk devices registered with the Netware operating system through the SDMSNETx.DSK driver.

PMSCHED.NLM allows manual control of power management to individual devices, while PMMAKE.NLM allows creation of a schedule for power management. You must not load these two utilities at the same time. If you plan to use power management regularly, you can have PMSCHED.NLM load from the AUTOEXEC.NCF file.

SDMS power management is supported only on disk devices. Some disk devices do not support power management. If such a device is detected, PMSCHED indicates the device is not power manageable. Command line options for the PMMAKE.NLM and PMSCHED.NLM utilities are described in this document.

Note:

Power management of disk devices connected to Symbios Logic 8XX controllers and handled by SDMSNETx.DSK is NOT supported in the NetWare 4.10 SFT-III environment.

Installing the Power Management Utilities *

Follow these steps to install the Power Management Utilities.

Using the PMMAKE.NLM Utility *

The PMMAKE.NLM utility is used to compile a power management schedule file from a standard text file, which you can create using the NetWare EDIT utility, or some other editor. Place the text file in the SYS:\PM directory on the server. The format for this text file is given below.

The syntax for the line that loads the PMMAKE utility is:

load PMMAKE <input filename> [<output filename>]

where <input filename> is the full path name of the text file containing the power management scheduling directives. If the path is not specified, the NetWare search path is used.

<output filename> is the full path name of the output configuration (CFG) file produced. If the output file name is not specified, the output file produced is named PM.CFG, located in the SYS:\PM directory.

The format for the PMMAKE input (text) file is:

 	!<DAY INDICATOR>
	BEGIN, <START TIME>, <DELAY TIME>, <DEVICE LIST>
	END, <STOP TIME>, <DELAY TIME>, <DEVICE LIST>
where
	DAY INDICATOR = SUN,MON,TUE,WED,THR,FRI,SAT
	START TIME = 24 hour time format: 00:00 - 23:59
	STOP TIME = 24 hour time format: 00:00 - 23:59
	DELAY TIME = Time to wait during no activity on a device before spinning it down, in 	seconds 1 - 3600
	DEVICE LIST = ALL or <DEVICE ID>[, <DEVICE ID> ...]
	DEVICE ID = BXXIXXLXX
		BXX identifies the bus
		IXX identifies the SCSI ID
		LXX identifies the LUN (if zero you can omit)

You may omit bus identifiers after the first one. It is assumed that multiple sequential directives are on the same day until another day is specified. It is assumed that future devices are on the same bus until a new bus id is specified.

For example:

	B00I01L01, I02, I03, I04, B01I00, I01,I02

specifies

	Devices ID 01 LUN 01, ID 2, ID 3, ID 4 on Bus 0
	Devices ID 0, ID1, ID 2 on Bus 1

Here is a PMMAKE sample input file:

!SUN
BEGIN, 00:00, 10, ALL
END, 23:59, 10, ALL
!MON
BEGIN, 00:00, 10, ALL
END, 06:00, 10, B00I00
END, 06:30, 10, B00I01
BEGIN, 18:00, 10, ALL
END, 23:59, 10, ALL
!FRI
BEGIN, 00:00, 10, ALL
END, 06:00, 10, B00I00
END, 06:30, 10, B00I01
BEGIN, 17:30, 10, B00I01
BEGIN, 18:00, 10, B00I00
END, 23:59, 10, ALL
!SAT
BEGIN, 00:00, 10, ALL
END, 23:59, 10, ALL

Using the PMSCHED.NLM Utility *

You must load the PMSCHED.NLM utility to activate power management for devices controlled by the SDMSNETx.DSK driver.

The syntax for the line that loads the PMMAKE utility is:

	load PMSCHED [<schedule file>]

where

<schedule file> is the name of the power management configuration file to use. If no file is specified, PMSCHED looks for SYS:\PM\PM.CFG. If PM.CFG is not found, PMSCHED loads for manual operation of power management.

Manual Operation

In manual operation, power management is initially off on all devices, and gather / displaying of device statistics is on. PMSCHED.NLM allows manual enabling and disabling of power management on individual drives. You can also enable and disable statistics gathering, and clear statistics.

To toggle power management on and off for a device, highlight the device under PMSCHED.NLM and press the F3 key. A menu appears with these selections:

Highlight Toggle Power Management and press Enter. Toggling Power Management has no effect on the device statistics.

Scheduled Operation

Automatic scheduling of power management cycles is possible only when PMSCHED remains loaded. For scheduled operation, PMSCHED.NLM requires either:

the file SYS:\PM\PM.CFG, created by PMMAKE.NLM,

or

the name of the schedule file, created by PMMAKE.NLM, loaded with PMSCHED as a command line parameter.

Unloading the PMSCHED.NLM Utility

Unloading PMSCHED.NLM does not turn power management off. The state of power management on each device is maintained until the server is downed or PMSCHED.NLM is reloaded.

Device Statistics

Device statistics are gathered on all devices registered by SDMSNETx.DSK with the NetWare operating system. These statistics record the number of reads and writes performed on a device and, if the device is power manageable by the SDMS driver, the number of times the device is spun up and spun down. Statistics are viewed, toggled on and off, or reset from the power management utility PMSCHED.NLM.

Important Additional Information

For Information Pertaining to a Specific Driver *

This document addresses options available on the Symbios Logic SDMS NetWare drivers, version 3.06.00. For information pertaining to a specific driver, please do one of the following:

• For NetWare version 4.XX, consult the SDMSNET4.DDI file for options available for SDMSNET4.DSK. This is accessed via the NetWare install utility.
• For versions of the driver 3.05.00 and later, use the -? option on the command line of the SDMSNETx.DSK driver
  

About Memory Allocation *

The driver allocates memory for certain structures based upon the maximum number of SCSI IDs (max_id), LUNs (max_lun), and paths (max_hbas) that are used in the system. The amount of memory allocated is based on the following formula: 414 bytes of memory are allocated for the structure, so Memory Allocated = 414 * max_hbas * max_lun * max_id.

So for default allocations, the amount of memory allocated is: Memory Allocated = 414 * 8 * 4 * 32 = 423,936 bytes (414 KB).

If, for example, only one host adapter is installed (or when using a Symbios Logic based PCI SCSI embedded controller and no add-in host adapters), only one LUN per device is used, and the bus is narrow (up to 8 SCSI IDs), then by setting the appropriate command line options, the amount of memory allocated is: Memory Allocated = 414 * 1 * 1 * 8 = 3,312 bytes (3.4 KB).

Optimal Use of Command Line Options *

Peripheral Device Dependent Optimizations

Some devices support SCSI tagged queue commands very efficiently, while others show a significant loss of performance when the number of queued requests exceed a certain value. (qtags, qdepth, qtag_type)

Most disk drives have an onboard read cache that is used by the drive controller to read ahead data. The driver may take advantage of this cache by maximizing the cache hits and ensuring a higher data transfer rate. However, there are devices that do not have an on board cache, and implementation of the sorting algorithm results in greater processing overhead and loss of overall performance. (sort)

Devices differ in their response times to requests. To ensure that the driver can handle devices with various response times, an option to tune the time-out value is available. (timeout)

Flexibility

In order to allow flexibility in controlling devices in a system, an option is provided to determine which devices the driver needs to exclude from taking over control. This allows independent software vendors to provide value added applications to directly control certain devices through the ASPI or CAM interface. (xcl)

Serious SCSI errors are logged to both the console and system error log by default. If a device is going bad, these errors may provide forewarning to replace the device before complete failure. However, you may turn off the logging of these errors to either or both of these locations. (Log_ScsiErrors)

For embedded systems, or other systems with fixed configurations, you can limit the amount of dynamically allocated memory by choosing to set maximum limits on the number of host adapters, devices, and logical units to support. The number of allocated buffers for processing IOs is reduced, which could adversely affect performance. (max_hbas, max_id, max_lun)

Overall System Timing

A driver designed for a networked file server environment has to optimize performance in tandem with the other components of the system. To avoid monopoly on the I/O bus, you can configure the size of the blocks for transfer across the SCSI bus. This ensures that other components get fair access to the I/O bus. (max_kb)

DOS Access Dependencies *

NetWare sometimes requires access to the DOS partition (perhaps to load a file, or to down the system). The SDMSNETx.DSK driver supports several SDMS DOS configurations.

SDMSNETx.DSK detects whether an SDMS 3.XX or 4.XX BIOS is present on the system in addition to the Symbios Logic ASPI8XX.SYS driver.

If there are DOS partitions present on any device connected to a Symbios Logic controller, an SDMS 3.XX BIOS or 4.XX BIOS is required for DOS support. The BIOS is either integrated into the system BIOS or resides with the controller itself.

Supported DOS Configurations *

The following are the DOS configurations supported by the SDMSNETx.DSK driver:

• When Using An SDMS 3.XX BIOS *

If an SDMS 3.XX BIOS is present, you may load an optional Symbios Logic ASPI driver (ASPI8XX.SYS) in the CONFIG.SYS file. An optional driver for CD-ROM support (SYMCD.SYS) works with these drivers in conjunction with MSCDEX.EXE.

Supported DOS Drivers

The SDMS NetWare drivers in a 3.XX BIOS environment only support ASPI8XX configurations. The following is a list of DOS drivers currently supported by the SDMSNETx.DSK driver:

ASPI8XX.SYS

The DOS ASPI Manger interface, ASPI8XX.SYS DOS driver in conjunction with the SDMSNETx.DSK driver is currently the only supported DOS ASPI configuration in a Netware environment.

SYMCD.SYS

The SYMCD.SYS driver is an ASPI based CD-ROM driver. It requires the ASPI8xx.SYS driver to be loaded.

MSCDEX.EXE

This driver (provided with DOS) is required in conjunction with SYMCD.SYS to install NetWare from a CD-ROM. Due to a bug in MSCDEX.EXE, the name assigned to the CD-ROM device not match the base name of any file installed from the CD-ROM. A recommended name to assign to the CD-ROM device is MSCD001.

Note:

The NetWare drivers can function independently of any DOS drivers, with the exception of installation of NetWare from CD-ROM. Performance is impacted on DOS accesses, but if memory is premium, this option is available.

DOS Drivers Not Supported

The following SDMS DOS drivers are not supported in the NetWare Environment.

When Using An SDMS 4.XX BIOS *

The SDMS 4.XX BIOS supports two different configurations, default Boot configuration and NVRAM configuration. Both configurations are supported.

Default Configuration

In default boot configuration, the 4.XX BIOS supports up to two Symbios Logic 8XX controllers. Disk devices are supported by the BIOS. Other SCSI devices are not supported without additional DOS drivers.

NVRAM

If NVRAM is present on a controller with a 4.XX BIOS, the SDMSNETx.DSK NetWare drivers use the on-board parameters to configure the Symbios Logic 8XX controllers.

Supported DOS Drivers

Currently only the ASPI8XX.SYS driver is supported in a NetWare configuration utilizing a 4.XX BIOS.

When Using No SDMS BIOS *

The SDMSNETx.DSK driver operates properly on a system when no SDMS BIOS is present. In this case, DOS must reside on a device which is not connected to a Symbios Logic controller based host adapter. As an example, DOS could reside on an IDE drive.