HP B- Accelerators Linux manual Enabling PCIe power, Using the device as swap

If the output shows that the device is running in Minimal mode, download the latest firmware from the HP website (http://www.hp.com/support), and then use the HP IO Accelerator Management Tool application or the "fio-update-iodrive (on page 49)" utility to upgrade the firmware.

CAUTION: Upgrade Path

•Do not attempt to downgrade the firmware on any IO Accelerator device.

•You must follow a specific upgrade path when upgrading an IO Accelerator device.

•When installing a new IO Accelerator device along with existing devices, you must upgrade all of the existing devices to the latest available versions of the firmware before installing the new devices.

•Consult the release notes for this IO Accelerator release before upgrading IO Accelerator devices.

IMPORTANT: The IO Accelerator device might have a minimum firmware label affixed (for

example, "MIN FW: XXXXXX"). This label indicates the minimum version of the firmware that is compatible with your device.

Enabling PCIe power

For PCIe IO Accelerators, if you have installed any dual IO Accelerator devices, such as the HP ioDrive2 Duo, then the device might require additional power than the minimum 25 W provided by PCIe Gen2 slots to properly function.

For instructions on enabling the device to draw additional power from the PCIe slots, see "Enabling PCIe power override (on page 36)."

Using the device as swap

To safely use the IO Accelerator as swap space, you must pass the swap_mode=1 kernel module parameter. To pass this parameter, add the following line to the /etc/modprobe.d/iomemory_vsl file:

options iomemory_vsl preallocate_memory=1072,4997,6710,10345

where 1072,4997,6710,10345 are serial numbers obtained from the fio-statusutility. Be sure to use serial numbers for the IO Accelerator modules and not the adapter.

A 4K sector size format is required for swap. This format reduces the driver memory footprint.

CAUTION: You must have 400MB of free RAM per 80GB of IO Accelerator capacity (formatted to 4KB block size) to enable the IO Accelerator with pre-allocation enabled for swap. Attaching an IO Accelerator with pre-allocation enabled and insufficient RAM might result in the loss of user processes and system instability.

IMPORTANT: During the loading of the IO Accelerator, the preallocate_memory parameter is recognized and the memory allocates when the specific device is attached.

Using the Logical Volume Manager

If you add the IO Accelerator as a supported type, the LVM volume group management application handles mass storage devices like the IO Accelerator. To use the LVM:

1. Locate the /etc/lvm/lvm.conf configuration file.

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