Intel Pro1000 PT Quad on DL380G5 R62

[JohnMH]

I have received two different sets of drivers for this NIC from support and both don't work. The card is recognized, but doesn't transmit/receive data and causes IRQ column in TOP to be elevated.

Is anyone else having this issue?

John

[chillyjim]

Ahhh now I see you your problem...HP+Intel = Bad

This is a known problem with HP and Intel NIC's (Just went through this with a customer of mine). Keep hounding TAC and your HP support folks.

[Routerkid1]

Install R60 HFA 05 if you can for now. I had to do that.

[JohnMH]

I am using NGX-R62, can't install that patch

Also, I have always used quad port Intel NICs on DL380 G4's and earlier. On This DL380 G5 and Windows 2003 SP1 the Quad port PT NICs work fine... This is a SPLAT driver issue..

John

[cprabel]

We were struggling with same problem this couple of week with a DL360 G5 and i think that we (more testing need to be done) found the problem.
What we did was :
1) Disable the Wake On Lan in BIOS
2) Disable ACPI in BIOS
3) set manually the PCI devices IRQ in BIOS in order that the 4 ports of PRO/1000 PT share the same IRQ (IRQ 7 in our configuration)
Doing this we can now ping and tcp connect on the 4 ports of intel PRO/1000 PT card and also to the 2 motherboard NICs.
We did that on SPLAT R60 and R62
Let everybody knows if this settings work for you. Hope so.
Regards

[cpsundar]

Hi,

I am planning for a SPLAT. Can any one help me in suggesting the right HW which gives less trouble or no trouble.

Thanks In Advance

[chillyjim]

Check Point's Firefly "High Performance Security Appliance". Not well advertised but fully supported HW/SW platform based on SPLAT.

[cprabel]

Disabling ACPI in BIOS (MFT Table) is the solution.
We did that on DL360G5 and DL380G5 with R60 R62 & R65 and everything is OK
Regards

[cpsundar]

Hi All,

I need some help in choosing the right server for SPLAT. Does SPLAT supports Dual core or Quad or multiple processors. Any limitations on the memory or Hard drives.
Also advise me on which NIC to use in those servers.

Please post a reply ASAP.

Thanks in advance.

[JohnMH]

Interesting...

Support is telling me there is a problem with the Intel Pro 1000 PT card and HP with SecurePlatform

waiting for more..

John

[wicked]

i've got dual core Dell 1950 w/ 2 quad port PT cards. the drivers would never work when running in dual CPU mode. finally i quit waiting for checkpoint to figure out the issue & dropped them into single processor mode for now.

[RayPesek]

Hi wicked,

I'm looking at buying a 1950. Can you give any more details on this issue, since I will need at least one quad NIC? How about other specs you selected, like RAID and memory?

Thanks,

Ray

[buulam]

Originally Posted by cpsundar

Hi All,

I need some help in choosing the right server for SPLAT. Does SPLAT supports Dual core or Quad or multiple processors. Any limitations on the memory or Hard drives.
Also advise me on which NIC to use in those servers.

Please post a reply ASAP.

Thanks in advance.

You will need to make sure you get Power to take advantage of multi processing.

Here is some info on NICs

Check Point Software: Open Servers and Devices -

[greenhold]

I was beating my head against the wall on the same issue for a few days. I finally got Checkpoint to give me some documentation, I'll paste it below. Also I'm not seeing the disable APCI option in the bios of the HP DL380 G5?

Per our conversation there is a known issue with newer HP servers (DL380 G5 is one of them) and Quad NICs. To my knowledge the only PCIe gigabit-quad port cards are manufactured by Intel and could be rebranded under a HP model number. The Intel model number is 1000/PT.

The issue has been traced back to HP, and the way their BIOS assigns IRQ numbers to the ports on the card. There is something about the architecture of the quad port cards that creates this problem. Dual head cards do not display this traffic issue.

Check Point Escalation in Dallas and R&D in Israel are aware of this, and have presented this to HP. HP has come back to say that this is a problem with their BIOS but we do not have an ETA on the fix. The problem only occurs in Red Hat Release 8 of the 2.4.x Linux kernel of which SPLAT is built on. Later releases of the 2.4 kernel have not seen the problem, and neither has other operating systems.

It should be mentioned that other server manufactures like IBM and Dell do not have this BIOS limitation, and should function normally with Quad-port cards. Please see the hardware compatibility list for more specifics. Specific servers and the NICs that they were tested with are listed. Check Point Software: Hardware Compatability List -

I would suggest that you fill out a request for enhancement through our website so that R&D will be aware of your situation. https://www.checkpoint.com/rfe/login.htm

It may also benefit you to inform your local Check Point SE about this situation also, so that through his channels awareness is raised.

Sorry for this inconvenience, but unfortunately there is no fix as of today.

[flame_g]

Originally Posted by cprabel

Disabling ACPI in BIOS (MFT Table) is the solution.
We did that on DL360G5 and DL380G5 with R60 R62 & R65 and everything is OK
Regards

Hi, I am having exaclty the same problem with the same kit. I cannot find the ACPI option in the BIOS, can you tell me where to find it?

[brixo]

Having a similar issue building my test lab...

Dell 745 big workstations, R65 and Intel Quad 1000 Pro. R65 recognises the cards, with correct driver, mii-tool shows that is negotiates correct parameters with the switch port, but no traffic can RX/TX.

After testing on R62 and the like, same issue.

The only thing I got to work was dropping from SMP to single CPU kernel. Then changed the /boot/grub/menu.lst to use the single CPU kernel as default.

It works now - Happy days.
Only using 1 CPU - Not so happy days.

[abusharif]

I would have to disagree with hp+intel = bad. 100% of our splat installations (loads of em) are hp+intel. Never had any issues with quad cards that are being supported. Ofc sometimes you have to go up to certain HFA level to get them to work but thats just about it.

edit: pre r65 that is

[JeffN]

We are running a DL360G5 with a HP NC340T quad port card on R62. We only have one cpu in there, though both cores are up and running. So far no issues at all to do with traffic flow.

[yelwoci]

We have same problem with DL360G5 R65
IRQ7 and disabled power features et al, didn't work, so tried IRQ 11, and then moved everything else to 7 (if I could)
Seems to have worked!

Thanks for the posts above

Y

[JohnMH]

So does changing anything help make this work? Any bios updates from HP help?

Just curious..

John