Alacritech Release 6.1.0.5 README File Date: Thur., Oct. 9, 2003 ====================================== Contents - Introduction - Caveats - Features + Legacy Operating System Support - Known Issues + Open Bugs + Integration Issues - Resolved Issues - Users Guide - Support and Feedback Mechanism - Bug Reports Introduction ============ This is the release of the 6.1.0.5 driver for Alacritech Server and Storage Accelerators for Microsoft Windows platforms. This release supports Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 (.NET). Windows NT 4.0 is not supported in this release. This file provides details on known outstanding bugs, support issues and feedback mechanisms for this release. This release contains the following file and directories: autorun.inf A small file which launches the installation process on a Windows system if it is located on CD media. bin A set of binaries which contain useful programs for viewing documentation. These specifically include Acrobat Reader. If you have your own Acrobat Reader on your system, these binaries will not be necessary to use. doc Files and documentation associated to Alacritech's hardware and software products. This includes the Alacritech Server and Storage Accelerator Users Guide setup.exe The Alacritech Accelerator Setup application, which allows the Alacritech drivers and libraries to be installed properly on your system. Readme.txt This file. w2k The software drivers and libraries for Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003. Caveats ======= No caveats. Features ======== No new features have been added with this release. No changes except for bug fixes differentiate this driver from 6.1.0.3 Details on new features as well as features that were available in previous drivers can be found in the Users Guide. Designed for Microsoft Windows ============================== These drivers are digitally signed and the Alacritech Accelerator hardware meets the Designed for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Designed for Microsoft Windows 2000 Server logo requirements. Legacy Operating System Support ------------------------------- Though this release does not support Windows NT4.0, support for Alacritech on NT4.0 is still available in the form of our 5.x series of drivers. Those drivers are available from our website at http://www.alacritech.com/html/techsupport.html Known Issues ============ This section contains a list of currently understood issues. Both open bugs and known integration issues are documented based on this specific release. Please review the current open bugs and known issues before filing a bug report. See the Support and Feedback section below for details on reporting bugs. Open Bugs --------- Bug 00678 [w2k,XP,2k3] (Alacritech behavior does not match Microsoft for network tunables) Some tunables for Windows are not evaluated and interpreted by the Alacritech drivers, particularly TcpMaxDataRetransmissions. Workaround - Please see the Alacritech Accelerator FAQ (http://www.alacritech.com/html/accelerator_FAQ.html#s4p1q7 ) for more details. Bug 00704 [XP] (atcp fails to initialize after attempting to open MSTCP) If Alacritech adapter is physically present in a NT4.0 workstation that is subsequently upgraded to Windows XP, and then the Alacritech 6.0.1.0 driver is installed, atcp cannot contact MSTCP, causing most networking services and protocols to fail. This bug only applies to upgrades from NT 4.0. Workaround - Uninstall and physically remove Alacritech cards before upgrading from Windows NT. Bug 00755 [w2k] (install problem when card is removed without uninstalling adapter) With two cards in a system, if the second card is removed without uninstalling the adapters and the adapters for the first card are uninstalled, subsequent installations using setup.exe fails until the system is rebooted. Workaround - Reboot system prior to running setup.exe Bug 00787 [w2k,XP] (Team Configurator race condition) If you dissolve a network team, but don't exit the team configurator (slictray), and then proceed to enable/disable network interfaces, any and/or all network interfaces may become unusable. Workaround - To avoid this problem, always exit the slic team configurator before enabling/disabling network interfaces. If you have already encountered this problem, use the 'remove' program (run in a cmd window) included in the w2k directory of the Alacritech distribution to uninstall the Alacritech adapters, and then reinstall them normally. Bug 00807 [XP] (Uninstall leaves trash in registry) After uninstalling Alacritech cards errant entries left in registry will cause any subsequent installation of any NICs to start Local Area Connection numbers to skip, as if the Alacritech cards were still installed. Workaround - If you encounter this problem, use the 'remove' program (run in a cmd window) included in the w2k directory of the Alacritech distribution to clean up the errant registry entries. Bug 00817 [all] Open/Close timeout values much too big iSCSI login traffic hangs up when communicating with a UNH target. This is the result of the target not responding to a graceful close request (FIN). The subsequent abort (RST) occurs after 15 seconds with a standard NIC, but takes 375 seconds with our card. Workaround - None. Planned for future release. Resolved Issues =============== Resolved Since 6.1.0.3 ---------------------- Bug 00871 [all] System crash on NAS cluster Crash encountered on cluster system with four processors, release 6.0.1.0 installed (ATCP/SLIC). Bug 00874 [all] initial connect retrans timer issues Initial tcp connection timeout of 75 sec (TVTCP_KEEP_INIT) and retransmit interval timing do not match microsoft behavior, causing too long of a timeout interval for live video environments. Bug 00875 [all] Cluster NAS with teaming crashes during high traffic. Cluster NAS with teaming crashes during high traffic. BugCheck 0xD1 (0x34,0x2,0x0,0xBF898313) Bug 00888 [2k3] 2k3 cluster traffic is shunted to Microsoft stack When running HPStress against a Windows 2003 cluster, with HSB teamed 1000x1 cards, fpstat and the perfmon SLIC object both reported that there was zero network traffic. No fastpath, No slowpath. Resolved Since 6.0.1.0 ---------------------- Bug 00753 [w2k] (Various installation problems) Installation of Alacritech cards in systems with large numbers of network interfaces installed (50+) causes multiple networking service failures for existing non-alacritech interfaces. removing and reinstalling the non-Alacritech interfaces will usually restore network functionality. This bug has been determined to be caused by a limit in the number of bindings allowed by NetBT, and typically occurs on systems that are shipped with a preconfigured windows image (like NAS boxes). Contact the system manufacturer for information on how to remove preinstalled adapters from the system image. Bug 00756 [w2k,XP] (Dell 1650 hangs with iSCSI I/O to disk) A Dell 1650 hangs when doing iSCSI I/O to two different iSCSI target vendors, using Microsoft draft 20 iSCSI initiator. This bug has been determined to be caused by a bug in the ServerWorks HE-SL chipset. Bug 00808 [XP] (Dissolving team can cause LAC properties window to hang) If you dissolve a network team in XP by bringing up the team configurator from the properties window of the Network connection for the team itself (the recommended method for win2k), the properties window will hang after the team is dissolved. You can safely kill the window with the task manager. To avoid the problem, use the slictray device to make any teaming changes on windows XP. Bug 00819 [all] Client crash when running Veritas NetBackup Using W2K SP3 and release 6.0.1.0, a stop was encountered. The stop was also encountered with 5.50 release. STOP 0xD1 (0x00350204, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xF71CC115) Bug 00822 [all] Cannot configure teaming on Non-English install When FEC configurator is launched on Japanese language OS, the configurator screen is blank. None of the configured Alacritech adapters appear on the configurator screen. Bug 00833 [all] ATCP crash: Address BFB0A03C base at BFAF6000 I just got the blue sreen on an HP LP2000r running 4-port card: STOP: 0x000000D1 (0x00000099, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xBFB0A03C) DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL Address BFB0A03C base at BFAF6000, Date Stamp 3e9b5cf7 - atcp.sys Bug 00841 [w2k,2k3] Cluster crashes when disabling teamed interface. When disabling an interface with teaming configured, an ASSERTion failure (or BSOD) may be taken in pagmini.c at line 982 if a static IP address is configured for the disabled interface. Bug 00862 [all] Card crashes in Intel SCB2 Server Motherboard Customer is experiencing sporadic card resets in their systems that are based on the Intel SCB2 Motherboard. Resolved Since 5.5.0 -------------------- 00339 Adding routes handled incorrectly Exchange of routing information is not handled correctly when both Alacritech and non-Alacritech interfaces exist on the same host and IP addresses are moved from one to the other. This can cause either total loss of connectivity for some routes, or loss of connectivity of TCP traffic only. 00437 ATCP connect failure with multiple interfaces similarly configured Routing code does not check to see if an interface with a higher priority route is actually up (cable connected). 00503 Routes missing from atcp route table not all persistent routes gettinq in to route table. not sure if this is a problem with table size or reading the registry, but customer has 226 persistent routes, and only 135 end up in atcp route table (according to atkroute anyway) 00514 atcp can fail to find adapter There are instances where atcp can fail to bind to an adapter. Specifically, it's possible that a wierd PCI device can cause the registry query to determine if a device is atcp-linkable to fail, and in the current code we will stop looking for more devices after the first attempt fails. 00516 Stuck in slowpath running netperf on Windows Stuck in slow-path when running Netperf with requests below ~32k between two SLIC adapters on Windows. This results in high CPU and low throughput 00557 ATCP: ipaddress issues with MS Cluster + DFS Setup: multinode cluster with Alacritech Gig cards for public interface and shared DFS filesystem. After a cluster fails over to a back up node, when the failed (primary) node is brought back online, the backup node refuses to release the virtual server IP address, causing the primary node to get a "duplicate IP address" message. Of course, this causes the virtual server that requires that IP address to remain offline. 00574 ATCP: Route add/delete not handled correctly if a route to a destination already exists, a new one will not be added to the atcp route table, even if it is a better route (like through a local interface) If multiple routes to a destination exist in the MS route table, but only one exists in atcp, deleteing any of the MS routes with delete the atcp route. 00582 ATCP: Self-referencial FTP on cluster system doesn't work A system is configured with ATCP and cluster services. A self -referencial FTP session is attempted. The session can not be established through all of the system's IP addresses. 00590 ATCP: Client connection failure after idle period When system is configured with ATCP on clients and server, the clients fail to recover after an idle period. 00654 ATCP: Interface and default gateway metrics not initialized Registry parameters "InterfaceMetric" and "DefaultGatewayMetric" are not used for initialization in ATCP. 00672 ATCP: Connection parameter changes require flush When the value of connection parameters, such as keep alive, is changed any offloaded connection should be flushed back to the host to synchronize. 00679 ATCP: FTP data connection (receiving [mput]) hang While running FTPTEST, some data connections (receiving a file transfer from FTP MPUT) spuriously result in a hang condition. 00698 System hangs or crashes running 1-byte test on 8-way system When running a multithreaded application that blasts 1-byte transactions across a SLIC interface between 2 8-way systems, the systems will hang or crash. 00711 Oracle database test program hangs with SLIC cards When running the Oracle database program, the connections between the two systems hang up. 00712 Oracle socket test program kills card, system. When running the oracle socket test program between two 8-way systems, the systems lock up and/or the card dumps. 00715 ATCP: Changes to non-SLIC interface not tracked Changes to the status of non-SLIC interfaces (such as disabling of the interface in NDIS, or the connection status changing) are not visible to ATCP. The potential for making "bad" routing selections may occur. 00717 Failures after establishing thousands of connections After thousands of connections are established, connections start to drop off. 00791 bad ipcsum in fastpath send fastpath send ipcsum generation (SetIPHdr) doesnt handle the double carry case correctly if the target address has certain values. This causes numerous flushes on the connection. Users Guide =========== There is a Users Guide provided to customers for use with Alacritech accelerators. For details on installation, management, teaming, and interoperability issues, please review the Users Guide, as full details have been provided there. Support and Feedback Mechanism ============================== Before Contacting Customer Support, please browse the troubleshooting section of the Users Guide, as well As the appropriate section of the FAQs (http://www.alacritech.com/html/accelerator_FAQ.html). Should you need to contact customer support, please gather all of the information requested in the Bug Reports section (below) before initiating contact. To contact Alacritech customer support you may use one of the following options: Web Site (preferred): The URL is http://www.alacritech.com/html/techsupport.html. Click the Customer Care Center button to register and file a support request. Phone: Phone number for the United States is 408-287-9997. Select option 2. E-mail: The address is support@alacritech.com. Your request for assistance will be responded to in a timely manner. Bug Reports =========== Please include the following information when sending in a bug request: Hardware: CPUs Amount of memory PCI busses Number of Alacritech accelerators Other network interfaces Software: Windows Version (2000, XP) Windows Service Pack version Version of Alacritech drivers Log information Event Viewer details related to Alacritech Windows dump files (if there is a crash) Testing environment What software is being tested What types of tests reproduce the problem Where is the failure occurring What has been done to try and solve the problem Patents ======= One or more United States and international patents apply to Alacritech products, including without limitation: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,226,680, 6,247,060, 6,334,153, 6,389,479, 6,393,487, 6,427,171, 6,427,173, 6,434,620, 6,470,415, and 6,591,302. 900097 Rev 4