ICP Novell NetWare Guide

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After having explained in chapters B and C the installation of the ICP Controller as well as
that of the host-drives, we would now like to give you some hints and pieces of advice on
how to install Novell's operating system Novell NetWare. We shall mainly focus on NetWare
3.x and NetWare 4.x. For successful installation, it is essential to study the NetWare system
manuals thoroughly. The information given in this chapter refers to the loading of the GDT
NetWare driver only.
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The structure of the Host Drives, which have been installed with GDTSETUP (in chapter C),
is not known to NetWare. I.e., the operating system does not recognize that a given Host
Drive consists of a number of hard disks forming a disk array. To NetWare, this Host Drive
simply appears as one single SCSI hard disk with the capacity of the disk array. This com-
plete transparency represents the easiest way to operate disk arrays under NetWare; neither
NetWare nor the PCI computer need to be involved in the administration of these complex
disk array configurations.
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The ICP Controller and the Host Drives previously configured with GDTSETUP are integrated
by means of GDT's driver software located on the GDT Novell NetWare disk. The driver be-
longs to the category of so-called NLMs (NetWare Loadable Module).
GDTRP310.DSK for NetWare 3.10
GDTRP311.DSK for NetWare 3.11
GDTRP312.DSK for NetWare 3.12
ASPITRAN.DSK ASPI manager
CTRLTRAN.DSK Module for GDTMON
(Note: More information about the GDTMON diagnosis tool can be found in a separate
chapter of this manual.). The installation of the fileserver itself is carried out following the
Novell NetWare documentation. According to your NetWare version, copy the appropriate
driver, the GDT ASPI Manager ASPITRAN.DSK and the GDT CTRLTRAN.DSK module to the
boot disk or the DOS boot partition. During installation, instead of LOAD ISADISK, type in,
:LOAD GDTRP310 <ENTER> (NetWare 3.10) or
:LOAD GDTRP311 <ENTER> (NetWare 3.11) or
:LOAD GDTRP312 <ENTER> (NetWare 3.12)
The GDT ASPI Manager ASPITRAN.DSK and the CTRLTRAN.DSK module will then be auto-
matically loaded by the GDT driver (GDTRP310, GDTRP311 or GDTRP312). If more ICP Con-
trollers are installed in the fileserver (i.e., for controller duplexing), the above mentioned
driver has to be called upon several times. But as it is re-entrant, it is only loaded once. A
single ICP Controller can be chosen by selecting its PCI slot number.

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The ICP Controller and the Host Drives previously configured with GDTSETUP are integrated
by means of GDT's driver software located on the GDT Novell NetWare disk. The driver be-
longs to the category of the so-called NLMs (NetWare Loadable Module).
GDTRP400.DSK for NetWare 4.x
ASPITRAN.DSK ASPI manager
CTRLTRAN.DSK Module for GDTMON
(Note: More information about the GDTMON diagnosis tool may be found in a separate
chapter in this manual.).
If you wish to install NetWare 4.x from a CD-ROM, you first have to set up the CD-ROM
drive under MS-DOS, following the instructions given in chapter D, section D.6. Then install
NetWare following the instructions in the NetWare documentation. During the installation,
the NetWare installation program asks you which hard disk driver you want to load, showing
a list of available drivers. As the GDT driver is not part of this list yet, you have to boot it
from the floppy disk: insert the GDT Novell NetWare disk into the floppy drive. Now, select the
drivers GDTRP400, ASPITRAN and CTRLTRAN. Complete the installation according to the
instructions given by the NetWare installation program.
Naturally you can also load the GDT driver directly from the system console, just as with
NetWare 3.x:
:LOAD GDTRP400 <ENTER>
(ASPITRAN.DSK and CTRLTRAN.DSK will be loaded automatically ). If more ICP Controllers
are installed in the fileserver (i.e., for controller duplexing), the above mentioned driver has
to be called upon several times. But as it is re-entrant, it is only loaded once. A single ICP
Controller can be chosen by selecting its PCI slot number.
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High performance SCSI controllers are designed for multi-I/O operations and are capable of
processing several I/Os simultaneously. Especially cache controllers with powerful on-board
RISC CPUs can handle several hundred I/Os per second. NetWare offers the option of ad-
justing the number of write I/Os which are loaded on the mass storage subsystem. In order
to gain optimum performance and speed from modern high performance disk controllers,
the amount of the so-called 'maximum concurrent disk cache writes' has been increased
with every further development of NetWare. Looking back to NetWare 3.11, only 100 'con-
current disk cache writes' were possible. With NetWare 4.10, this can be as much as 1000.
The number of concurrent disk cache writes delivering the best performance is highly de-
pendent on the performance of the installed disk controller, the amount of cache RAM on
the controller and the hard disks. The ICP Controllers can easily cope with up to 500 simul-
taneous requests. The following command line enables the adjustment of a new number
under NetWare (default value = 50):
set maximum concurrent disk cache writes = xxxx
where xxxx represents the required number of concurrent disk cache writes.

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PCI-Systems which are not equipped with an EISA-Bus behave in the same way as an ISA
mainboard with regard to the available RAM memory. NetWare therefore does not auto-
matically recognize the available memory above 16 MByte. The command 'Register Memory'
allows the registration of memory above 16 MByte.
Memory shortage can appear while loading several applications simultaneously on the
server, especially where large volumes are concerned. This is because the Register Memory
Command is normally carried out in the autoexec.ncf file. This is usually located in the SYS-
Volume.
An autoexec.ncf file placed in the DOS-Partition of the NetWare Server helps to get around
this problem. In order to carry out this process, the disk driver has to be removed from the
startup.ncf and inserted into the autoexec.ncf in the DOS partition. In this case, the disk
driver has to be loaded directly after the Register Memory command. An example of an
autoexec.ncf file:
register memory 1000000 1000000
LOAD C:GDTRP312
....
In addition, a further start file can be loaded on the SYS volume for differentiation, e.g., with
the name 'autonet.ncf'.
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The following problem often occurs when installing NetWare 4.1 server: While copying the
module cdrom.nlm the system hangs - forever. This problem only occurs when the CD-ROM
drive's name under MS-DOS is 'cdrom', i.e., the config.sys/autoexec.bat contains the fol-
lowing files:
DEVICE=aspicd.sys /D:cdrom
and
mscdex /D:cdrom
To avoid this problem, simply change the CDROM's name in DOS to another name, i.e., use
'/D:scsicd' instead of '/D:cdrom'.
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High server utilization, combined with a large number of applications running on the server
often leads to the following problem: The number of 'Dirty Cache Buffers' increases tremen-
dously and the server is then not stable. In order to avoid this situation, the following pa-
rameters should be modified:
1. Increase the number of concurrent disk cache writes for the disk subsystem:
set maximum concurrent disk cache writes
This parameter can be increased up to 500 for high performance controllers and fast hard
disks.
2. Decrease the delayed write standard parameter:

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set dirty disk cache delay time
This parameter sets the time whereafter 'dirty buffers' are written (flushed) from the cache
of NetWare to the hard disk. The minimum value is 0.8 seconds which influences the server
performance substantially. Therefore, care should be taken not to go below 0.8 seconds.
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If an ICP Controller is operated under NetWare together with a further controller / hostadap-
ter which does not support the ASPI standard, SCSI Raw Devices cannot be operated on
both controllers (tapes, CD-ROMs).
In general, NetWare gives preference to controllers which support the ASPI Standard (GDT,
Adaptec). As soon as ASPITRAN.DSK is loaded (Auto-Loading Module) tapes and CD-Roms
on the ASPI non-compatible controller are no longer recognized.
To avoid this problem, the file ASPITRAN.DSK can be deactivated via a modification.
Please note: After this modification, no other Raw Devices (tapes, CD-Roms) are recognized
on the GDT (Adaptec,...).
In order to deactivate ASPITRAN.DSK, the string 'ASPI_Entry' has to be found by using a
Disk-Monitor in ASPITRAN.DSK (please pay attention to capitals etc). This string is then
modified, e.g., by replacing 'A' with an 'X' (i.e., 'XSPI_Entry').
This modified ASPITRAN.DSK enables the operation of Raw Devices on the non-ASPI-
compatible Controllers.
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All ICP Controllers temporarily store the status information from all hard disks which are
connected. This information can be very useful when searching for possible causes of disk
failures or interferences. The last status information consists of a hexadecimal, 8 digit num-
ber and can be displayed via the GDTMONitor or can be saved in a SAVE INFORMATION
ASCII file. The information is temporarily available in the ICP Controller's RAM. Therefore, it
is important to check this information before switching off and before carrying out a Reset if
a disk failure has occurred, or if interference was present. The last status information is di-
vided into Controller-specific and SCSI-specific messages. The most important Last-Status
codes are described in this manual, a more detailed description can be found in the files
LASTSTAT.PDF (Adobe Acrobat format) or LASTSTAT.TXT (ASCII format) at the ICP vortex
Website (http://www.icp-vortex.com).
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The additional capacity resulting from an online capacity expansion of an existing Array
Drive is introduced to the system as a new Host Drive. In order to be able to make use of
the new capacity without having to down the server, type "scan for new devices" on the server
console to recognize the new capacity. Use Install to build new partitions and volumes.
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Please make sure that you always have the latest version of your ARCserve software.
The back-up program ARCserve can be used in connection with the ICP Controller. The
communication between the tape device (for example DAT) and the ICP Controller takes
place through the ASPI interface. For this purpose, the GDT ASPI Manager ASPITRAN.DSK is
needed. When loading the regular GDT NetWare driver (for example GDTRP311.DSK), the
ASPI Manager is automatically loaded, too. During the installation of ARCserve, choose
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