3Com 155 PCI manual Implementing Resilient Server Links in NetWare

Resilient Server Links Overview 4-5

■A NIC cannot be configured as a standby NIC for another standby NIC.

■A resilient server link is established only if the active NIC is loaded before the standby NIC and is operational after NetWare is booted.

The standby NIC cannot assume the configuration profile of an active NIC that has never been operational.

Implementing Resilient Server Links in NetWare

In NetWare, an active NIC and all of its standby NICs must share the same interrupt request level (IRQ). Because the PCI bus often assigns different IRQs to devices found in the PCI slots, you may need to use the system CMOS setup utility to manually assign the same IRQ to the target NICs. To see the IRQ of an ATMLink NIC, access the NIC Information screen in the ATMLink utility (see Chapter 5).

A standby NIC must have these attributes:

■One or more designated active NICs

■The same link type as its active NICs

■Its own card number and channel number

The Home, Link Type, Card Number, and Channel Number parameters in the NetWare install utility are used to specify these attributes. The corresponding keywords are home, linktype, channel, and cardnum. See Table 4-1 and Table 4-2 later in this chapter for explanations of the NetWare install utility parameters and keywords.

To configure standby NICs manually in the AUTOEXEC.NCF file, use the appropriate keywords, as shown in the following example, where card 2 is a standby NIC for cards, 1, 3, and 4. Note that the active NICs must be loaded before the standby NICs.

load 3c975 cardnum=1, linktype=1 channel=1 (etc.) load 3c975 cardnum=3, linktype=1 channel=2 (etc.) load 3c975 cardnum=4, linktype=1 channel=3 (etc.) load 3c975 cardnum=2 linktype=1 channel=4 home=1,3,4