IBM ServeRAID Support CD v6.11 (previous release) - Servers

Download Description

Note: Please see the IBM ServerProven web site for system compatibility information.

Extracting and using .iso image files to create a CD-ROM disc

New IBM xSeries firmware and device driver file naming convention

ServeRAID Family 6.10 to 6.11

• Support for new operating systems:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS2.1 for Intel 64-bit (Itanium) kernels
  • Support for integrated RAID controllers (such as the LSI 1030) under SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 for AMD64
• Fixed a problem that prevented the "IBM ServeRAID Support" CD from booting on systems with a nVidia video adapter.
• Fixed a problem with importing spanned array configurations.
• Fixed a problem with tape drive firmware updates.
• Fixed a problem that prevented the ServeRAID-6i controller from detecting drives under Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS2.1, Quarterly Update 2 (QU2).
  

ServeRAID Family 6.00 to 6.10

• Support for the IBM ServeRAID-6i Ultra320 SCSI controller.
• Support for new operating systems:
  • Red Hat Linux 9.0
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 2.1 for Intel and AMD kernels
  • SCO UnitedLinux 4.0
  • SCO OpenServer 5.0.7
  • SUSE Linux Professional 8.1
  • SUSE Linux Professional 8.2 for Intel & AMD kernels
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 for AMD64
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 64-bit Edition
  • Turbolinux Enterprise Server 8
• Support for 16 ServeRAID controllers on the Windows and Netware operating systems; and 12 ServeRAID controllers on all other supported operating systems.
• Enhanced functionality in the ServeRAID Manager:
  • New Task Scheduler and Task Manager in the ServeRAID Manager Agent. Use this feature to schedule lengthy operations at a convenient time, such as a logical drive migration or synchronization.
  • Display options on the Preferences menu. Use this feature to choose sorting criteria for objects in the SeveRAID Manager tree and to choose the disk capacity unit of measure (megabytes or gigabytes).
  • Ability to set remote access ports in the ServeRAID Manager Agent configuration file (RaidAgnt.pps). This option no longer appears on the Preferences menu.
  • Ability to enable and disable copy back. Use this feature to restore a logical drive to its original configuration after replacing a failed drive in an array.
  • Ability to rebuild a logical drive without first removing and reinserting the failed drive.
  • Ability to enable and disable unattended mode from the Controller menu. This option no longer appears on the Clustering actions menu.
• Support for new IPSSEND commands:
  • SET REBUILDRATE high, medium, low (DOS only)
  • GETCONFIG now displays FRU information
  • GETEVENT DDD displays defunct disk log
  • SET COPYBACK enables/disables copy back
  • GETBST displays Bad Stripe Table entries
• Fixed a problem with the ServeRAID software build procedure that failed to include the cluster driver software with the clustnt.img file on the "IBM ServeRAID Support" CD.
• Fixed a problem with the ServeRAID-3HB controller that caused performance to degrade when the battery backup cache failed.
• Fixed a problem with ServeRAID-4L and ServeRAID-4Lx controllers that resulted in a race condition when the BIOS and firmware tried to access flash memory at the same time. The system now polls the ROM BIOS before the firmware.
  

ServeRAID Family 5.11 to 6.00

• Support for the new IBM ServeRAID-6M Ultra320 SCSI controller.
• Support for new operating systems:
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition for 64-bit Servers
  • SUSE Linux 8.0 64-Bit Edition
  • Red Hat Linux 8.0
  • Support for SCO UnixWare (formerly Caldera UnixWare) and SCO Open Unix (formerly Caldera Open Unix)
• Enhanced functionality in the ServeRAID Manager:
  • New Email Notification Manager in the ServeRAID Manager Agent notifies users about system events.
  • Ability to initialize logical drives during Express or Custom configuration. This option no longer appears on the Preferences menu.
  • Ability to log warning and fatal events to the operating system event log on Windows and Unix systems. Use the ServeRAID Manager Agent to enable/disable event logging.
  • Simplified process for creating spanned arrays.
  • Reorganized some Action menu options for easier access to ServeRAID Manager functions.
  • New 2 terabyte limit for logical drives.
  • Support for RAID Level-5EE logical drives on ServeRAID-6M, ServerRAID-4L, ServerRAID-4Lx, ServeRAID-4M, and ServeRAID-4Mx controllers.
• (For Windows NT and Windows 2000 only) The failover device driver can no longer be used for installation. You must install the regular Windows device driver first; then, update using the failover driver.
• Fixed a problem with OS/2, which caused data corruption on shut down. To fix the problem, the new OS/2 driver implements a two-pass shutdown procedure. The first pass issues a firmware flush cache command. The second pass waits eight seconds for the firmware to complete the flush; then, shut down resumes.
• Fixed a problem with the SCO OpenServer device driver, which sometimes caused a controller reset. This problem occured when the driver detected a bad command ID from ips bcopy.
• Fixed a problem during failover and server restart which caused clustered drives to be marked defunct.
  

ServeRAID Family 5.10 to 5.11

• Fixed a cache flushing problem in the ServeRAID-3H/3HB controller. This problem could occur when: (1) the array includes a RAID level-5 logical drive running in WB mode; (2) a drive goes defunct during an active flush to that drive and then (3) an adapter is reset after another flush command is sent to the same sector on that drive. This fix was implemented in firmware to help increase data reliability.
• Fixed an intermittent system hang which can occur during a PCI bus scan when a ServeRAID 4M, 4L, 4Mx, or 4Lx is installed in slots 4, 5, and/or 6 of the x345 system.
  

ServeRAID Family 4.84 to 5.10

• Support for the new IBM ServeRAID-5i Ultra320 SCSI controller.
• Support for new operating systems:
  • OpenLinux 3.1.1
  • Red Hat Linux 7.2 and 7.3
  • SUSE Linux 7.3 and 8.0
• New event mechanism to alert user when version numbers do not match in BIOS, firmware, and device drivers.
• New audible alarm in ServeRAID Manager agent when critical and fatal events occur.
• Fixed a problem with the ServeRAID Manager "Send test trap" function. Certain management programs such as Tivoli Netview did not recognize the test trap.
• Fixed a problem with the ServeRAID Manager configuration wizard when creating large arrays near 1 Terabyte or greater in size. The large arrays caused the ServeRAID Manager configuration wizard to display the wrong logical drive size.
• Fixed a problem in UnixWare/Open UNIX device driver of not handling 64 bit DMA requests from the OS when greater than 4GB memory addressing is activated.
• (For Windows NT and Windows 2000 only, ServeRAID-3 family only) Fixed 'Event ID 11' condition in critical RAID-level 5 logical drives.
• (For Windows NT and Windows 2000 only) Fixed resource constraints under heavy workloads (Event ID 11).
• Reduced excessive error logging in critical RAID-level 1 logical drives.

ServeRAID Family 4.80 to 4.84

• (For Windows NT and Windows 2000 only) Fixed delay condition known to cause the ServeRAID driver or other hardware to timeout (Event ID 11).
• (For Windows NT only) Many causes of blue screens can lead to data corruption. In rare circumstances, if a blue screen occurs while a RAID level-5 configuration has one defunct physical drive, data corruption might occur. To reduce the risk of data corruption in this scenario, the ServeRAID Windows NT device driver now delays after a blue screen occurs before resetting the ServeRAID controller.
• Additionally, a fix was implemented for the rare occurrence of data corruption when all of the following conditions are met:
  • A ServeRAID-3HB controller is installed with the 4.70 or 4.80 firmware and device driver.
  • Four or more hard disk drives are in the array.
  • One or more of the hard disk drives in the array are 17 GB, or larger.
  • The array includes a RAID level-5 logical drive.
  • The server is turned off without shutting down the operating system, or a blue screen occurs.
• Fixed system hangs or error messages that might occur during tape backup operations or other single-threaded operations because of ServeRAID command time-outs. This problem was observed specifically on SCO OpenServer ("Unrecovered read error" messages are displayed on the OpenServer console).
• (For e-Server xSeries 360) When using the "IBM ServeRAID 4.80 BIOS and Firmware Update (1 of 2)" diskette on a ServeRAID-4H controller, fixed occurrences when the firmware update did not complete successfully and the server would restart.
• The performance on some applications has been improved when using write-back mode on a RAID level-5 logical drive that has a defunct physical drive.