Fibre adapter and tape SAN

[Derek Richardson]

All,
Does anyone have any experience or know any gotchas when connecting a
node to a fibre switch (that drives a tape SAN)?  Here's the hardware
and situation :

gateway node is an IBM x340 (dual Intel PIII, 2Gb RAM, etc.  fairly
generic high-end server-class machine) w/ a QLogic 2200 series Fibre
Channel adapter, attached to an IBM SAN Fibre Channel Switch 2109 Model
S16 (actually a number of them interconnected, ea. 16 port).  There are
a number of IBM Magstar 3590E1 model tape drives (high-end geophysical
use) attached to the SAN switch.  Some of these tape drives are
connected directly to the switch (fibre from tape drive to switch),
others are UltraWide Differential SCSI going to a switch that converts
that to fibre, then to the main fibre switch.

We are running Redhat Linux 7.1, kernel 2.4.3 (redhat updates version,
w/ the extra patches/tweaks and drivers they include), all patches and
updates that applicable installed.

So far, I have connected an individual tape drive directly to the node,
everything came up fine, could read/write, run all mt commands, etc.
just fine (performance was actually a good deal better than w/ the SCSI
connections I've previously used).  Then I plugged the node directly
into the fibre switch and booted it.  The kernel boots, sees devices,
sees the Qlogic adapter, sees the 29 devices and their addresses
attached to it, and then just sits there.  The messages are :

( at boot time - w/out the link to the fibre switch plugged in - from
/var/log/messages )
...
qla2x00: detect() found an HBA
qla2x00: VID=1077 DID=2200 SSVID=1077 SSDID=2
(scsi): Found a QLA2200  @ bus 1, device 0x5, irq 20, iobase 0x4d00
scsi(2): Configure NVRAM parameters...
scsi(2): Verifying loaded RISC code...
scsi(2): Verifying chip...
scsi(2): Waiting for LIP to complete...
scsi-qla0-adapter-node=200000e08b034ec1;
scsi-qla0-adapter-port=210000e08b034ec1;
scsi2 : QLogic QLA2200 PCI to Fibre Channel Host Adapter: bus 1 device 5
irq 20
        Firmware version:  2.01.27, Driver version 4.28
...

( same - from /var/log/dmesg )

identical to above

( when link is plugged in -  from /var/log/messages )
...
scsi(2): LIP reset occurred
scsi(2): LOOP UP detected
scsi(2): Waiting for LIP to complete...
scsi2: Topology - (F_Port), Host Loop address  0xffff
qla2100_update_host: Host table Full.scsi2: Topology - (F_Port), Host
Loop address  0xffff
scsi2: Topology - (F_Port), Host Loop address  0xffff
...

( when link is plugged in - dmesg output )

same as above

( from /proc/scsi/qla2x00/2 )

QLogic PCI to Fibre Channel Host Adapter for ISP2100/ISP2200/ISP2300:
        Firmware version:  2.01.27, Driver version 4.28
Request Queue = 0x1fb38000, Response Queue = 0x1fb30000
Request Queue count= 256, Response Queue count= 256
Number of pending commands = 0x0
Number of queued commands = 0x0
Number of free request entries = 251
Number of mailbox timeouts = 0
Number of ISP aborts = 0
Number of loop resyncs = 0
Number of retries for empty slots = 0
Number of reqs in retry_q = 0
Number of reqs in done_q = 0

SCSI Device Information:
scsi-qla0-adapter-node=200000e08b034ec1;
scsi-qla0-adapter-port=210000e08b034ec1;
scsi-qla0-target-0=5005076300004507;
scsi-qla0-target-1=5005076300003ef6;
scsi-qla0-target-2=5005076300003497;
scsi-qla0-target-3=5005076300003c45;
scsi-qla0-target-4=5005076300004029;
scsi-qla0-target-5=5005076300002408;
scsi-qla0-target-6=5005076300003290;
scsi-qla0-target-7=5005076300002864;
scsi-qla0-target-8=50050763000035be;
scsi-qla0-target-9=1000006045161784;
scsi-qla0-target-10=100000604516234d;
scsi-qla0-target-11=5005076300003acd;
scsi-qla0-target-12=500507630000273a;
scsi-qla0-target-13=5005076300003338;
scsi-qla0-target-14=5005076300003295;
scsi-qla0-target-15=10000060451617d5;
scsi-qla0-target-16=10000060451620fe;
scsi-qla0-target-17=500507630000406c;
scsi-qla0-target-18=50050763000035d2;
scsi-qla0-target-19=50050763000041ac;
scsi-qla0-target-20=50050763000035d3;
scsi-qla0-target-21=1000006045161f40;
scsi-qla0-target-22=1000006045161784;
scsi-qla0-target-23=500507630000404f;
scsi-qla0-target-24=500507630000331b;
scsi-qla0-target-25=5005076300004038;
scsi-qla0-target-26=5005076300003812;
scsi-qla0-target-27=500502e020000159;
scsi-qla0-target-28=500502e0200000c3;
scsi-qla0-target-29=500502e02000015f;
scsi-qla0-target-30=500502e020000171;
scsi-qla0-target-31=50050763000030e3;

SCSI LUN Information:
(Id:Lun)