Moving Boards Between Domains On Sun 6800/6900 Servers

Hey There,

For some light weekend fare. I thought I'd put together this quick little tutorial on the simple task of moving boards (CPU, IO) between domains on Sun 6800/6900 servers. For our purposes, we'll assume that the boards are already installed on the physical system and that we want to move one CPU and one I/O board from Domain C to Domain A.

The first thing you want to do is connect to the System Controller and then attach to the Platform Shell. This is basically necessary since you'll be working on two separate Domains. The Platform Shell will allow you to connect to each and go back and forth if you need to.

System Controller 'host-sc0':

    Type  0  for Platform Shell

    Type  1  for domain A console
    Type  2  for domain B console
    Type  3  for domain C console
    Type  4  for domain D console

    Input: 0

Platform Shell

host-sc0:SC>

The first thing you'll want to do is show the board assignments, to make sure you're moving the right devices. You can do this simply with the showboards command below (output trimmed):

host-sc0:SC> showboards

Slot     Pwr Component Type                 State      Status     Domain
----     --- --------------                 -----      ------     ------
/N0/SB0  Off CPU Board                      Assigned   Not tested C
/N0/SB1  Off CPU Board                      Assigned   Not tested C
/N0/SB2  Off CPU Board                      Assigned   Not tested A
/N0/SB3  Off CPU Board                      Assigned   Not tested A
/N0/SB4  Off CPU Board                      Assigned   Not tested C
/N0/SB5  Off CPU Board                      Assigned   Not tested C
/N0/IB6  Off PCI I/O Board                  Assigned   Not tested C
/N0/IB7  Off PCI I/O Board                  Assigned   Not tested C
/N0/IB8  Off PCI I/O Board                  Assigned   Not tested C
/N0/IB9  Off PCI I/O Board                  Assigned   Not tested A

Now assuming we wanted to move IO Board 7 and CPU Board 1 from Domain C to Domain A, you can do so, also simply, using the deleteboard and addboard commands:

host-sc0:SC> deleteboard IB7
host-sc0:SC> deleteboard SB1
host-sc0:SC> addboard -d A IB7
host-sc0:SC> addboard -d A SB1

Then just double check :)

host-sc0:SC> showboards

Slot     Pwr Component Type                 State      Status     Domain
----     --- --------------                 -----      ------     ------
/N0/SB0  Off CPU Board                      Assigned   Not tested C
/N0/SB1  Off CPU Board                      Assigned   Not tested A
/N0/SB2  Off CPU Board                      Assigned   Not tested A
/N0/SB3  Off CPU Board                      Assigned   Not tested A
/N0/SB4  Off CPU Board                      Assigned   Not tested C
/N0/SB5  Off CPU Board                      Assigned   Not tested C
/N0/IB6  Off PCI I/O Board                  Assigned   Not tested C
/N0/IB7  Off PCI I/O Board                  Assigned   Not tested A
/N0/IB8  Off PCI I/O Board                  Assigned   Not tested C
IB9      Off PCI I/O Board                  Available  Not tested A

And repeat as necessary. When you boot up the separate domains (The logical machines) you'll enjoy the benefit of the new hardware. Easy peasy :)

Cheers,

, Mike

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