InfiniBand connections provide high performance and secure connections to external storage devices. After installing an InfiniBand host bus adapter into a PDomain PCIe slot, and cabling the adapter to an InfiniBand switch, the PDomain can access external InfiniBand storage devices.
In an InfiniBand environment, an InfiniBand host bus adapter installed in a PDomain is connected to an InfiniBand switch using InfiniBand cables. The InfiniBand switch is cabled using InfiniBand cables to an external storage device (for example, an Oracle ZFS storage appliance). Alternatively, the InfiniBand switch can be connected to an Ethernet network, so the external storage device will access the switch through the network.
During the server installation, you will configure the PDomain to boot off an iSCSI target (for example, a drive or partition) on the storage device using the IPoIB protocol. Once configured, you can install the Oracle Solaris OS on the iSCSI target device.
Each server PDomain must be configured to boot off of a storage device. Installing and cabling additional InfiniBand adapters, especially in different CMIOUs within the PDomain, can provide redundant connections to one or more InfiniBand switches.
iSCSI Devices Using IPoIB in SPARC M8 and SPARC M7 Servers Administration Guide
Booting and Shutting Down the OS in SPARC M8 and SPARC M7 Servers Administration Guide
Supported PCIe cards: https://community.oracle.com/community/server_%26_storage_systems/systems-io/sparc-servers
Oracle storage products: https://www.oracle.com/storage/