Answers to Chapter Questions Chapter pre-test 1. IDE is less expensive, simpler, offers good performance, leaves little room for expansion, and is best implemented for desktop environments. SCSI is more expensive, offers excellent performance, can be used in RAID systems, is eas- ier to expand, and is best suited for high-end server environments. 2. SCA connections within a SCSI server allows several hard drives to be plugged right into a SCSI backplane. This feature is useful for RAID arrays and hot plug capabilities. 3. Narrow SCSI uses an 8-bit bus width. Wide SCSI uses a 16-bit bus width. 4. Termination prevents electrical signals from reflecting back from the end of the bus and causing data disruption. 5. Cable length is dependant on the type of electrical signaling and the number of devices on the bus. An electrical signal loses quality as it travels a longer distance. 6. A physical drive is an actual single piece of hardware. A logical drive can encompass a number of drives to create partitions of larger sizes. 7. Fast SCSI refers to the doubling of the speed of SCSI-2 standard devices to 10 MB/s. Ultra2 refers to devices within the SCSI-3 standard with speeds of 40 MB/s. 8. Typically, 8 devices for narrow SCSI, and 16 devices for wide SCSI. 9. The host adapter is usually device 7 to give it the highest priority on the SCSI chain. 10. Single-ended signaling refers to using a voltage to indicate an on condition, and using zero voltage to indicate an off condition. Differential signaling uses the difference between two voltages to determine the condition. Assessment questions 1. C. The message is informative, not a warning. Answer A is incorrect because there is no error condition. Answer B is incorrect because this is a RAID 5 sys- tem. Answer D is incorrect because a RAID 5 array with six 9GB will result in 45 GB of available disk space. For more information, see the “Upgrading SCSI RAID Systems” section. 2. A. Older SCSI systems will not boot unless the drive is set to ID 0. Newer SCSI technology has eliminated this condition. For more information, see the “Device IDs” section. 224 Chapter 8 ✦ Study Guide 4809-3 ch08.F 5/15/01 9:47 AM Page 224 225 3. A. SCA adapters require 80-connector drives. Answer C is incorrect because you adapt a regular hard drive to an SCA interface. Answer D is incorrect because the built-in SCSI backplane takes care of termination issues. For more information, see the “SCA adapters” section. 4. D. Fast SCSI has a narrow bus width. Answer A is incorrect, because this config- uration will work with an adapter. Answer B is incorrect because SCA connec- tors are built into a server backplane. Answer C is incorrect, because there is no need for a special terminator. For more information, see the “SCSI-2” section. 5. A. The factory default settings on most hard drives configure it as a master, and two masters in one machine will cause it not to boot. Answer B is incor- rect, because this configuration would have worked. Answer C is incorrect, because IDE/ATA systems do not need terminators. Answer D is incorrect because the system would have used the cable select feature to identify the drives on the cable. For more information, see the “IDE configuration” section. 6. D. The lights indicate a proper termination. Answer A is incorrect, because the SCSI system would not work with improper termination. Answers B and C are incorrect because narrow and wide refer to bus widths. For more informa- tion, see the “Termination” section. 7. C. The master is usually at the end of the cable, while the slave drive is in the middle. If cable-select drives are placed in the wrong positions, the server will not boot. Answer A is incorrect because there is no termination in IDE/ATA systems. Answer B is incorrect, because the jumpers usually aren’t needed in cable select. Answer D is incorrect, because the other drive should still be working if the other failed, unless it was the boot drive. For more information, see the “IDE configuration” section. 8. A. The adapter will enable the narrow device to connect to the wide bus. Answer B is incorrect because the current configuration will not work. Answer C is incorrect, although it might be necessary if the device is at the end of the bus. Answer D is incorrect, because 80-pin connections are usually associated with SCA connectors. For more information, see the “Cables, connectors, and termination” section. 9. D. The new hard drive can be the second device on the primary controller. Answer A is incorrect, because there is room for one more device on each controller. Answer B is incorrect, because you should not connect a CD-ROM with your hard drive, and it is not using cable select. Answer C is incorrect, because the original hard drive is already configured as the master. For more information, see the “IDE configuration” section. 10. B. The configuration will work, although the Ultra3 device will only operate at Ultra2 speed. Answer A is incorrect, because no adapter is needed. Answer C is incorrect, because newer SCSI devices are usually backwards compatible. Answer D is incorrect, because the limit for a wide SCSI system is 16 devices. For more information, see the “SCSI configuration and upgrading issues” section. 225 Chapter 8 ✦ Study Guide 4809-3 ch08.F 5/15/01 9:47 AM Page 225 11. B. LVD signaling will work with 25m if there are only two devices on the bus. For more information, see the “Cable lengths” section. 12. A. The drives are configured correctly, so it is most likely a bad or loose cable. Answer B is incorrect, because the drives are not using cable select. Answer C is incorrect, because IDE/ATA drives do not require termination. Answer D is incorrect, because the drive doesn’t have to be on the secondary IDE channel. For more information, see the “IDE configuration” section. 13. D. Most intermittent problems on a SCSI bus come from conflicting device ID’s. Answer A is incorrect, because ID 7 is the normal ID for a host adapter. Answer B is incorrect, because mixing devices will work if the proper adapters and termination are used. Answer C is incorrect because the cabling was men- tioned to be in order, without exceeding proper lengths. For more information, see the “Device IDs” section. 14. B. Typically, you have to configure the RAID array to allocate the space to your logical containers. Answer A is incorrect, because you have to configure the extra space. Answer C is incorrect, although it could be a later step in the process. Answer D is incorrect, because the BIOS has nothing to do with the disk space allocation. For more information, see the “Upgrading SCSI RAID Systems” section. 15. A. The CD-ROM still needs an ATAPI driver to run. Answers B and C are incor- rect, because it is best to keep the slower CD-ROM on its own channel sepa- rate from the hard drives. Answer D is incorrect because the CD-ROM drive is the only device on that controller and, therefore, does not require cable select. For more information, see the “IDE/ATA standards” section. 16. A. The drive will still only run at its current speed. A faster bus will not increase the speed of the device. For more information, see the “SCSI configuration and upgrading issues” section. 17. B. Newer cable select systems color-code the connectors on the IDE cable to more easily show where the master and slave drives go. Answer A is incor- rect, because the colors do not identify the device type. Answer C is incorrect, because the red stripe along the edge of the cable signifies pin 1. Answer D is incorrect, because there is no termination on an IDE/ATA system. For more information, see the “IDE configuration” section. 18. B. The device will only run as fast as the host SCSI system. Answers A, C, and D are incorrect, because the system would probably not work at all under any of these conditions. For more information, see the “SCSI configuration and upgrading issues” section. 19. C. The red stripe identifies which part of the cable to connect to pin 1 on the motherboard and on the device. Answer A is incorrect, because special cable select connections have different colors for master and slave. Answer B is incorrect, because it does not identify UDMA. Answer D is incorrect, because 226 Chapter 8 ✦ Study Guide 4809-3 ch08.F 5/15/01 9:47 AM Page 226 227 IDE/ATA systems do not need to be terminated. For more information, see the “IDE cabling” section. 20. D. SCA connectors enable the hard drives to be plugged right into the system backplane without the need for configuring device IDs or installing separate power cables for each device and support RAID technologies with hot swap capabilities. For more information, see the “SCA adapters” section. Scenarios 1. The two hard drives should be kept together on the same IDE controller. Mixing them with a slower device such as the CD-ROM might cause performance issues. The first hard drive should be configured as the master, and the second hard drive configured as the slave. Alternatively, you can use the cable select on both drives if you have a compatible cable and install the hard drives on the proper connectors. The CD-ROM can be installed as a master on the secondary IDE channel. 2. The terminator after hard drive 2 is disrupting the bus. Termination should only be at the ends of the SCSI bus. In this case, the host adapter probably has built-in termination, so the middle terminator can be removed and placed at the end of the bus after the tape drive. 3. The best solution would be a server that contains a built-in RAID controller and SCA hard drive connections. This allows a fault tolerant RAID system using multiple hard drives to be created, with the ability to use hot plug/hot swap capabilities in the event of a single drive failure. There should also be enough hard drive slots to provide for future expansion. 227 Chapter 8 ✦ Study Guide 4809-3 ch08.F 5/15/01 9:47 AM Page 227 4809-3 ch08.F 5/15/01 9:47 AM Page 228 Upgrading Cards and Peripherals EXAM OBJECTIVES 3.6 Upgrade adapters (e.g., NICs, SCSI cards, RAID, etc.) 3.7 Upgrade peripheral devices, internal and external • Verify appropriate system resources (e.g., expansion slots, IRQ, DMA, etc.) 3.8 Upgrade system monitoring agents 3.9 Upgrade service tools (e.g., diagnostic tools, EISA configuration, diagnostic partition, SSU, etc.) 3.10 Upgrade UPS 9 9 CHAPTER ✦✦✦✦ 4809-3 ch09.F 5/15/01 9:47 AM Page 229 230 Part III ✦ Upgrading CHAPTER PRE-TEST 1. Why is it important for system devices to have different IRQs? 2. Describe adaptive fault tolerance. 3. How is fast Ethernet different from standard Ethernet? 4. What should always be upgraded before upgrading or adding a device? 5. What is the purpose of a DMA channel? 6. What type of slot is used for high-end video adapters? 7. At what speeds do Gigabit Ethernet adapters run? 8. Why would you upgrade a tape drive on a server? 9. What is the purpose of adapter teaming? 10. What does the VA rating of a UPS refer to? ✦ Answers to these questions can be found at the end of the chapter. ✦ 4809-3 ch09.F 5/15/01 9:47 AM Page 230 231 Chapter 9 ✦ Upgrading Cards and Peripherals P rocessors, hard drives, and memory are the most important elements of your system that you need to upgrade, and these procedures are covered in Chapters 7 and 8. Your server also contains many other peripherals and internal and external devices that you will need to upgrade. Without proper preparation, and careful consideration of the various characteristics and resources that a peripheral will use, a simple upgrade can quickly turn into a large nightmare. This is no differ- ent with software upgrades, whose dependencies will have to be upgraded at the same time to ensure they will work properly after the upgrade. In this chapter, various internal and external peripherals are discussed, including tips for upgrading, and solutions to common problems that you may encounter. Software items such as monitoring tools, and vendor diagnostic partitions and utilities are also discussed. System Resources ✦ Verify appropriate system resources (e.g., expansion slots, IRQ, DMA, etc.) To function properly, devices and peripherals must be able to communicate directly with system resources such as the CPU, memory, and disk drives. To facilitate this process, and ensure that a device can talk to these resources when needed, the computer assigns certain lines and channels for that particular device to operate on. This enables the devices to appropriately share the computer’s resources. The three main ways that are used are Interrupt request lines (IRQ), Input/Output addresses, and Direct Memory Access (DMA) channels. Most modern servers rely on PCI plug- and-play technology to allocate resources for peripheral devices. On the exam, pay careful attention to questions that deal with device conflicts, as the symptoms of the problem might indicate a different solution. IRQ Interrupt request lines are used so that a particular device can directly communicate with the CPU. To do this, the device must first be able to divert the CPU’s attention to it. This process is called an interrupt. The name accurately describes its use, as the device will actually interrupt the CPU to allocate a resource to it. IRQs are assigned by numbers, 0 to 15. There are two interrupt controllers that handle these IRQs. The first controller handles 0 through 7, the second controller 8 through 15. Interrupts 2 and 9 are used to cascade from the first controller to the second con- troller. Each device is assigned its own IRQ to use. There cannot be more than one device using the same interrupt, or a conflict will occur, and confuse the processor, and the device will not function properly. Some devices actually share IRQs, such as Exam Tip Objective 4809-3 ch09.F 5/15/01 9:47 AM Page 231 232 Part III ✦ Upgrading serial COM ports. The IRQ of a device can usually be set by two ways. On older peripheral cards, you could set the device settings right on the card with special jumpers. On newer device cards, this is all done through software, either through the special configuration software that comes with the device, or through the net- work OS itself. To resolve an IRQ conflict, you will have to examine the IRQs of your current devices to find the conflict. This can usually be done through the OS, and some OSs will actually notify you of the conflict and tell you which devices are involved. Find an IRQ that is not in use by any other device, and configure the new device to use that setting. You must ensure that the IRQ is not in use by any internal systems in the server. The computer industry has a standard set of IRQ settings to use, summarized in Table 9-1. IRQ conflicts are very common, especially between sound, video, and network cards, as they often use the same IRQ numbers. Table 9-1 Standard Interrupts and Device Assignments IRQ Device Assignment Typical Uses 0 System timer - 1 Keyboard - 2 Cascade for IRQs 8–15, Modems, COM 3, COM 4 serial ports redirected to IRQ 9 3 Serial port (COM 2) COM 4 serial port, modem, sound card, network card 4 Serial port (COM 1) COM 3 serial port, modem, sound card, network card 5 Parallel port (LPT 2) Sound card, network card 6 Floppy controller - 7 Parallel port (LPT 1) Sound card, network card, other peripherals 8 Real-time clock - 9 Unassigned Sound card, network card, SCSI adapter, (redirected from IRQ 2) other peripherals 10 Unassigned Sound card, network card, SCSI adapter, other peripherals 11 Unassigned Video card, sound card, network card, SCSI adapter, other peripherals 12 Mouse Video card, sound card, network card, SCSI adapter, other peripherals In the Real World 4809-3 ch09.F 5/15/01 9:47 AM Page 232 233 Chapter 9 ✦ Upgrading Cards and Peripherals IRQ Device Assignment Typical Uses 13 Math co-processor - 14 Hard disk controller SCSI adapter (primary IDE) 15 Hard disk controller SCSI adapter, network card (secondary IDE) I/O addresses Input/Output addresses represent special locations in system memory that are reserved for a particular device. As information is passed back and forth between the peripheral device and the CPU, the I/O address is a common place for this information to reside. I/O address ranges can be of various sizes depending on the type of device. As with IRQs, I/O addresses must be unique for each device. I/O addresses can be examined and modified the same way as IRQs, by setting jumpers on the card itself, or by using software configuration. Listed in Table 9-2 is a list of the most frequently used I/O addresses and the devices that use them. I/O addresses are represented in hexadecimal format. Table 9-2 Summary of Common I/O Addresses and Devices I/O Address Range (Hexadecimal) Device 1F0–1F8 Hard drive controller 200–20F Game controller 201 Game I/O 278–27F Parallel port (LPT 2) 2F8–2FF Serial port (COM 2) 320–32F Hard drive controller 378–37F Parallel port (LPT 1) 3B0–3BF Graphics adapter (mono) 3D0–3DF Graphics adapter (color) 3F0–3F7 Floppy controller 3F8–3FF Serial port (COM 1) 4809-3 ch09.F 5/15/01 9:47 AM Page 233 [...]... pt04.F 5/ 15/ 01 9:48 AM Page 256 4809-3 ch10.F 5/ 15/ 01 9:48 AM Page 257 10 C H A P T E R Monitoring Performance EXAM OBJECTIVES 4.1 Perform regular backup 4.2 Create a baseline and compare performance ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ 4809-3 ch10.F 258 5/ 15/ 01 9:48 AM Page 258 Part IV ✦ Proactive Maintenance CHAPTER PRE-TEST 1 What is a server baseline? 2 What elements of the server should you monitor when performing a server. .. They can sometimes be overwritten during the upgrade process Proceed with the upgrade, reboot the server, and then check to see if the server is receiving trap messages and verify that the monitoring program is working properly 253 4809-3 ch09.F 5/ 15/ 01 9:48 AM Page 254 4809-3 pt04.F 5/ 15/ 01 9:48 AM Page 255 P Proactive Maintenance A R T IV ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ In This Part T o ensure the integrity of the computer... server is plugged into is only running at 10 Mbps C The server BIOS does not support dual-speed NIC cards D The indicator lights are reversed 249 4809-3 ch09.F 250 5/ 15/ 01 9:48 AM Page 250 Chapter 9 ✦ Study Guide Scenarios 1 A customer wants a new Web server set up to use network adaptive teaming, fault tolerance, and load balancing They would like the server to run at least 400 Mbps network speed, and... setup will only run at 400 Mbps network speed 4809-3 ch09.F 5/ 15/ 01 9:48 AM Page 247 Chapter 9 ✦ Study Guide 8 A server has recently had its UPS upgraded to a 1200 VA rated UPS During a recent power outage, the server ran for twenty minutes before the UPS battery ran out The server came down cold, and some data was corrupted Why was the server not shut down properly by the UPS? A The UPS monitoring... line conditioning has nothing to do with automatic server shutdown For more information, see the “Upgrading UPS” section 9 D The adapters’ effective speed will be their respective bandwidths added together, which in this case is 8 × 100 = 800 Mbps For more information, see the “Adaptive teaming” section 251 4809-3 ch09.F 252 5/ 15/ 01 9:48 AM Page 252 Chapter 9 ✦ Study Guide 10 B When reconfiguring a... modern servers come with a video card installed right on the motherboard The reason for this is that video performance is not an issue with server installations The only time you should be using the display is when you are at the server console configuring the server, troubleshooting a problem, or installing or upgrading hardware and software It is best to leave the default VGA screen resolution on the server. .. restart a server into a non-standard video mode, certain operating systems enable you to force the server into VGA mode at boot time so you can fix your configuration In the Real World Some newer operating systems such as NetWare 5 only allow a minimum of SVGA for the video resolution This is fine, as long as you do not try to configure higher resolutions that may not be supported 4809-3 ch09.F 5/ 15/ 01... the complexity of server systems, plug-and-play is usually not appropriate for configuring devices on a server Expansion slots Before you upgrade any peripheral component, the first thing to examine on your server is if you have any expansion slots left Most modern servers come with a large number of PCI slots, often more than ten, to support as many devices as you need With most servers proving on-board... loaded 14 A technician has upgraded a server s NIC card from a 10 Mbps card to a 100 Mbps card The company uses category 3 UTP cabling, with RJ- 45 connectors When the server is rebooted, the network card does not connect to the network What is the most likely cause of the problem? A The cabling must be category 5 to support 100 Mbps B The connectors should be RG -59 C The network cable is defective D... installed a new network card in a server Other peripherals on the server include a SCSI tape drive, an on-board sound card, and an AGP video card When the server is booted, it reports an IRQ conflict with the network card that disables it What is the most likely cause of the problem? A Sound card B Video card C Tape drive D System BIOS 2 A technician has replaced a server NIC that was running at full-duplex . configuration and upgrading issues” section. 2 25 Chapter 8 ✦ Study Guide 4809-3 ch08.F 5/ 15/ 01 9:47 AM Page 2 25 11. B. LVD signaling will work with 25m if there are only two devices on the bus. For. to provide for future expansion. 227 Chapter 8 ✦ Study Guide 4809-3 ch08.F 5/ 15/ 01 9:47 AM Page 227 4809-3 ch08.F 5/ 15/ 01 9:47 AM Page 228 Upgrading Cards and Peripherals EXAM OBJECTIVES 3.6 Upgrade. condition. Answer B is incorrect because this is a RAID 5 sys- tem. Answer D is incorrect because a RAID 5 array with six 9GB will result in 45 GB of available disk space. For more information, see