HP General IO Connectivity specs

Installation Overview & Planning

Overview of the HP Fabric Clustering System

1Installation Overview & Planning

NOTE	The latest copy of this document can be found at http://docs.hp.com within the
	Networking and Communications area.

Overview of the HP Fabric Clustering System

This document contains the following sections that give installation information for HP Fabric:

•“About HP Fabric Clustering System for InfiniBand‘”

•“HP Fabric Clustering System Hardware Components”

•“HP Fabric Installation Prerequisites”

•“Install Fabric Adapters”

•“Install HP Fabric Software”

•“Install Fabric Switches”

•“Attach Cable Guides & Cables”

•“Internet Protocol over InfiniBand‘ (IPoIB)”

About HP Fabric Clustering System for InfiniBand

InfiniBand is an industry-standard high-speed, packet-based interconnect for node-to-node communications. HP Fabric Clustering System for InfiniBand provides higher speed, lower network latency and uses less CPU than other industry standard protocols (for example, Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet). Instead of using a traditional bus-based technology, HP Fabric is built around switched fabric architecture, providing the bandwidth necessary for high speed data transfer. For more information on the InfiniBand standard see “http://www.infinibandta.org”.

HP’s release of this clustering solution delivers the performance and scalability required by the following:

•Technical Computing Clusters supporting HP Message Passing Interface (MPI) based applications

HP Fabric Clustering System Hardware Components

This section describes the various HP Fabric products. For more information on HP Integrity server systems that support HP Fabric products, see the HP Fabric Clustering System Release Notes, available at http://www.docs.hp.com/en/netcom.html#Fabric%20Clustering%20System%20for%20InfiniBand.

NOTE	This document uses the term HP Fabric Clustering System to refer to the hardware and
	software that form the HP Fabric Clustering System interconnect product.
	The term HP Fabric Clustering System refers to the following copper-based hardware
	components:
	• AB286A HP PCI-X 2-port 4X Fabric (HPC) Adapter
	• AB291A HP 12-port 4X Fabric Copper Switch

Chapter 1