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Release 7.0.0 new features

Filesystems


Supported adapters
UnixWare 7 continues to support the adapters certified with UnixWare Release 2.1. See the Compatible Hardware Web Page (or the static version on your product CD-ROM) for a list of host bus adapters certified with UnixWare Release 2.1.

In addition, new or updated HBA drivers are supplied for Adaptec, Compaq, Data General (CLARiiON), DPT, Mylex, Qlogic, SymbiosLogic, and others.


Disk stamping in SDI
The SDI subsystem (previously known as PDI) has been enhanced to support printable disk stamps. The purpose of disk stamping is to provide a system-wide unique identifier on each disk medium and to provide access to these identifiers (stamps) outside of the SDI subsystem. Disk stamps are stored on disk media in the Physical Disk Information (PDINFO) structures in active UNIX partitions. The sd01 and sdi target drivers and the prtvtoc and edvtoc commands are enhanced to support the disk stamping feature.

Ghost names
In a multipath I/O environment, there are multiple paths to any single disk. The name for the disk is determined by the first path discovered to the disk. Ghost names are provided in UnixWare to avoid the naming conflicts encountered when controllers fail in this environment. With this feature, the operating system continues to use the original device name even when a device is no longer accessible (or has a different first path). The system administrator also has the option to run sdighost to change all references to the ghost names to be the real names.

In SCO UnixWare 1 and 2, when you move a disk from one controller to another, the disk obtains a new address. A new device node is created for this disk, and the old device node is removed.

In UnixWare, once a disk is moved from one controller to another, it occupies two addresses (a mapping between old address and new address). You cannot add a disk at the old address until you remove the mapping. sdighost is provided in UnixWare 7 to clear the mapping.


Tape data compression characteristics control
The st01 tape target driver is enhanced to support two new ioctls, namely T_GETCOMP and T_SETCOMP. This allows system administrators and backup software to control data compression and decompression hardware features supported by various SCSI tape drives. Refer to the st01(7) manual page for details.

SDI layered storage driver architecture
The SDI subsystem has been extended to provide support for layered storage device drivers. It is no longer necessary for such drivers to manipulate private kernel interfaces such as the device switch in order to intercept I/O requests. SDI now provides a set of concise, versioned interfaces to support such drivers.

Multi-Path MPIO support in SDI
The first consumer of the newly extended SDI interfaces is a driver called MPIO. This driver provides support for multiple, redundant paths to any disk storage device. MPIO will round-robin I/O requests on each available active I/O path to a disk, providing maximum disk loading while reducing traffic on individual SCSI buses. In the case of path failure, MPIO will automatically re-route I/O requests to a working path. MPIO also supports storage devices that support multiple, redundant I/O interfaces and the switching between those interfaces in the case of a path failure.

SCO OpenServer compatibility
A new command sdimkosr5 translates the SCO OpenServer disk layout into the UnixWare layout. After executing this command the disk is no longer treated as an SCO OpenServer disk, but instead as a fully supported UnixWare disk.

SCO OpenServer disks can also be read and written without conversion as long as compatible filesystem formats are used, for example, the SCO OpenServer s51k format. However, UnixWare SDI administrative commands such as prtvtoc and edvtoc will not work on unconverted disks.


Extended addressing
In SCO UnixWare 1 and 2 the device addressing model supports 32 devices with 32 Logical Units per device. In UnixWare these addresses when used by SDI target drivers are replaced by a simple unsigned integer (providing 2^32 unique addresses for controllers, buses, logical units target). They can be translated by SDI into whatever address is appropriate for the given HBA.

© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
UnixWare 7 Release 7.1.4 - 22 April 2004