Has anyone successfully created a second service or I/O domain on a 5220? If so how?

I know these boxes have only been available for a few months but I can't find ANY information on the web about this, it's all about T2000s. On those you split the PCI bus, but in the LDoms 1.0.1 Admin Guide there's a note that says (effectively) "Don't do this on a T2 system, add an NIU to the domain instead".

Ok fine, two questions arise;

1) How? and

2) what does that actually get me? what devices does that enable the new domain to "see"?

The admin guide makes no further reference the NIU's, the LDM man page doesn't mention NIU's at all and nobody else in the entire world, from what I can gather has ever tried this, or if they have, they haven't felt it necessary to tell the rest of us! A lot of the other info on the web (such as the beginner's guide) is all about LDoms 1.0, which of course, doesn't support NIUs anyway...

Or am I just missing something very simple?

Basically what I want to do is add two of my 4 disks and two of the 4 e1000g ports to a domain. That's pretty much it really.

cheers,
Toby.

 

 

Shall I take that as a "no" then? :-)

Ok, can anyone answer the simpler question:

How many service or I/O domains can you create on a T5220?

cheers,
Toby.

 

 

Yes, you can take that as a "no". The T5220 only has a single PCI-E root complex, so all the PCI-E devices must currently reside in the control domain.

Once LDoms ads support for PCI-E hybrid I/O (which is on our roadmap, but not yet committed to a specific release), then individual PCI devices can be assigned to different domains.

Hope that helps.

-ric

 

 

Ok, I'll keep my eyes open for that.

thanks,
Toby.

 

 

This point is quite disappointing for T5220 servers.
What will be the next-generation with at least dual-pci-E ?
A great stuff (before the PCI-E/hybrid capability) would be to get an access to a physical raw device just declared in the IO-domain. This device could be then directly handled and shared by the Hypervisor... Just an idea..
Thanx for your help.
C.

 

 

It is very disappointing indeed, the fact that a next generation server like the T5220 removes capabilities from previous generation like the T2000. In this case, by having 2 PCI buses you eliminate a single point of failure. If you are using virtualization and you loose the Service Domain, all your guest LDOMs will be down.

 

 

There is now a new generation of servers (T5140 and T5240) with Ultrasparc T2+ cpus
and 2 PCI buses.

 

 

How can I determine what hardware I need for the T5220 to be able to assign physical network attachment to LDoms?

Thanks
Glen