This chapter discusses the CF topology table as it relates to the CF portion of the Cluster Admin GUI.
The CF topology table is part of the CF portion of the Cluster Admin GUI. The topology table may be invoked from the [Tools]->[Topology ] menu item in the GUI (refer to "4.6 Displaying the topology table." in "Chapter 4 GUI administration"). It is also available during CF configuration in the CF Wizard in the GUI.
The topology table is designed to show the network configuration from perspective of CF. It shows what devices are on the same interconnects and can communicate with each other.
The topology table only considers Ethernet devices. It does not include any IP interconnects that might be used for CF, even if CF over IP is configured.
Displayed devices
The topology table is generated by doing CF pings on all nodes in the cluster and then analyzing the results. cfconfig -l causes the driver to be loaded by pushing its modules on all possible Ethernet devices on the system, regardless of whether or not they are confseigured for use with CF. This allows CF pings to be done on all Ethernet devices on all nodes in the cluster. Thus, all Ethernet devices show up in the topology table.
cfconfig -L causes CF to push CF modules only on the Ethernet devices which are configured for use with CF.
The -L option offers several advantages. On systems with large disk arrays, it means that CF driver load time is reduced. On SPARC Enterprise M-series systems with dynamic hardware reconfiguration, Ethernet controllers that are not used by CF can be moved more easily between partitions. Because of these advantages, the rc scripts that load CF use the -L option.
However, the -L option restricts the devices which are capable of sending or receiving CF pings to only configured devices. CF has no knowledge of other Ethernet devices on the system. Thus, when the topology table displays devices for a node where CF has been loaded with the -L option, it only displays devices that have been configured for CF.
It is possible that a running cluster might have a mixture of nodes where some were loaded with -l and others were loaded with -L. In this case, the topology table would show all Ethernet devices for nodes loaded with -l, but only CF configured devices for nodes loaded with -L. The topology table indicates which nodes have been loaded with the -L option by adding an asterisk (*) after the node's name.
When a cluster is totally unconfigured, the CF Wizard will load the CF driver on each node using the -l option. This allows all devices on all nodes to be seen. After the configuration is complete, the CF Wizard will unload the CF driver on the newly configured nodes and reload it with -L. This means that if the topology table is subsequently invoked on a running cluster, only configured devices will typically be seen.
If you are using the CF Wizard to add a new CF node into an existing cluster where CF is already loaded, then the Wizard will load the CF driver on the new node with -l so all of its devices can be seen. However, it is likely that the already configured nodes will have had their CF drivers loaded with -L, so only configured devices will show up on these nodes.
The rest of this chapter discusses the format of the topology table. The examples implicitly assume that all devices can be seen on each node. Again, this would be the case when first configuring a CF cluster.
