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gogogo5
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Clarification needed on SAN document

Hello all

On page 147 of the current SAN System Design & Deployment Guide it states:

Setting the HBA Timeout for Failover

The timeout value for I/O retry operations is usually set in the HBA BIOS driver. (You

might also want to change the operating system timeout, as discussed in "Setting

Operating System Timeout" on page 148.)

VMware recommends that you set the timeout value to 30 seconds:

+For QLogic HBAs, the timeout value is 2*n + 5 seconds, where n is the value of+

the PortDownRetryCount parameter of the BIOS of the QLogic card. You can

change the path-failure detection time by changing the value of the module

parameter qlport_down_retry (whose default value comes from the BIOS

setting). The recommended setting for this parameter is 14.

Please can someone clarify the following:

1. If the default comes from the BIOS and you just change the BIOS setting to 14 then you don't need to edit the ESX.CFG file?

2. If you leave the BIOS at default and just change the ESX.CFG then this overrides the BIOS regardless of its value?

I know there have been other posts on this topic but need that extra clarity Smiley Happy

cheers

gogogo5

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gogogo5
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Anyone?

There must be some Master or Champion that can comment, even VMware themselves could provide clarification....

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