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Power11 and HBA 16GB

  • 1.  Power11 and HBA 16GB

    Posted Thu July 24, 2025 04:01 PM

    I have a question. Does Power11 no longer support 16GB HBAs? EN2A and B are being withdrawal, Is a new card coming, or will everything be 32GB and 64GB?



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    Miguel Peralta
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  • 2.  RE: Power11 and HBA 16GB

    Posted Fri July 25, 2025 07:29 AM

    The Sales Manual for various Power11 systems no longer lists the EN2A or EN2B adapters. There indeed are 32Gb and 64Gb adapters that replace it, like the EN1J (and EN1K) adapters that are PCIe4 2-port 32Gb Optical Fiber Channel adapters and the EN1N (and EN1P) adapters that are PCIe4 2-port 64Gb Optical Fiber Channel adapters.

    The 32Gb adapters will support running 8, 16 or 32 Gbps. The 64Gb adapters will support running 16, 32 or 64 Gbps.

    So, depending on your needs, the EN1J/K or EN1N/P adapters may be a good replacement for the older EN2A/B cards.



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    Richard Westerik
    Principal specialist
    Simac IT NL bv
    Ede
    +31651575123
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Power11 and HBA 16GB

    Posted Mon July 28, 2025 12:58 PM

    I have been told the same thing - EN2A can not be sold as new, however, when running a SPT - it does show up as supported in the Power11. I am trying to verify if it's a glitch. It may be you would just need to purchase refurbed and not with the new Power11 config.



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    Derrick Smith
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Power11 and HBA 16GB

    Posted Tue July 29, 2025 11:47 AM

    Hello Miguel 
    From PCI placement information in IBM Docs for 9080-HEU, EN1A (high profile for IO) /B (low profile for cpu node) are supported in P11.
     In my opinion this is due to the possibility to convert Power10 into a Power11 system that should come in the near future, so we can migrate some IO adapters from P10 system and probably other stuff.
     https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/power11/9080-HEU?topic=placement-adapter-rules-slot-priorities-9080-heu
    If bying new FC adapter, consider the ones with replaceable SFPs/transceivers EN1/2 N/P instead of EN1J/K.



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    Christophe Ducrocq
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Power11 and HBA 16GB

    Posted Wed July 30, 2025 07:25 AM

    I have no "inside baseball" knowledge on this.  But - will hazzard a guess.
    Speeds continuously evolve.
    32G cards run 8/16/32 so they can still throttle back to the lower speeds to service customers.
    Historically:
    PCIe speeds will continue to evolve ( now in Gen5 )
    1G / 2G / 4G cards paved the way for higher speeds
    Single port cards go by the wayside to multiport.

    I guess what I am saying is that we must be vigilant in keeping current to avoid falling behind.  It is hard to say " future proofed " because the all this technology has a lifespan and will be replaced by something more spectacular.  So love it deeply but also prepare for its replacement.  



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    Alan Fulton
    Follow me on Twitter - @The_Iron_Monger
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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Power11 and HBA 16GB

    Posted Fri August 01, 2025 12:58 PM

    Hi...  the announcement and sales manual pages for S1124 (and I suspect the other P11 servers) indicate that the EN2A and B adapters are Supported.  They are not offered for new sales, as mentioned by others, IBM has moved on to the 32 and 64Gb adapters (which will 'negotiate' to 16Gb).  If you have an existing adapter you want to reuse, or if you purchase one 'used' from IBM's Certified PreOwned channel (direct or via business partner) you have a supported configuration.  Try a control-f or other find for EN2A on these pages.  I hope that helps.

    Family 9824+02 IBM Power S1124 (9824-42A) - IBM Documentation 

    IBM Power S1124: A New Era of Full-Stack Design and Synergy - IBM Documentation

     



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    Charlie Berry
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    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: Power11 and HBA 16GB

    Posted Thu August 07, 2025 08:16 AM

    out of curiosity , what is the use case of using 16G HBAs on IBM Power 11?



    ------------------------------
    Mohammad Safir
    Techincal Sales Specialist
    Saudi Business Machines, Ltd.
    Riyadh
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    Original Message


  • 8.  RE: Power11 and HBA 16GB

    Posted Fri August 08, 2025 01:50 AM

    Dear Mohammad

    The most frequent reason should be backward compatibility with other devices.  In the past when 16Gbps was the faster fiber speed, I had a few customers who wanted to upgrade their Power servers but not the SAN devices, or sometime even SAN switch, that still worked at 8 Gbps speed max.  For such customers, if the old 8Gbps HBAs were still supported in the new Power servers, they saw no reason to buy new HBAs. 



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    Satid S
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    Original Message


  • 9.  RE: Power11 and HBA 16GB

    Posted Fri August 08, 2025 02:29 AM

    I have to concur with Satid, backwards compatibility. We are using tape libraries that support only an 8Gbps Fibre Channel connection. So we need to select cards (and other SAN components) that can still support 8 Gbps. We working on replacing the tape drives by immutable copies on flash storage, but until that day we need a few components that allow low-speed connections, so we cannot always select the newest/greatest components (like the 64Gbps fiber card that does not support falling back to 8Gbps). 



    ------------------------------
    Richard Westerik
    Principal specialist
    Simac IT NL bv
    Ede
    +31651575123
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 10.  RE: Power11 and HBA 16GB

    Posted 30 days ago

    Thanks for your feedback.

    we had the same case earlier where customer was trying to connect existing LTO-7 directly with IBM Power systems, on the other hand newly sold IBM Power systems were equipped with 32Gbps FC HBAs. as you might be aware 8Gbps LTO-7 does not support direct connectivity in this case with the server. So we had to introduce SA24B-6 switches in between as workaround. this is one example use case. obviously there wasn't single Tape Drive and SAN switches were used for Storage connectivity as well to justify the cost.



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    Mohammad Safir
    Techincal Sales Specialist
    Saudi Business Machines, Ltd.
    Riyadh
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    Original Message


  • 11.  RE: Power11 and HBA 16GB

    Posted 29 days ago

    Here is the IBM URL for reference

    https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7237696

    Rick



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    Rick Eggleston
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    Original Message


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