[SUMMARY] Adding memory to a V240

Hi all,

Many thanks to those that responded, particularly Mike Carter, Michael
Horton and John Christian. The general consensus seemed to be that as
long as each bank has matching DIMMS, the system should recognise the
new memory. However, as John Christian pointed out :

"On a V240, "Do not mix DIMM capacities" refers to the whole machine.
You can mix DIMMS and the total memory installed (6-GB in your case)
should be recognized by the system. However, memory interleaving will be
"broken" and the system might actually run slower than your original
4-GB layout. Memory interleaving is kind-of like a RAID stripe on disks,
it stripes memory usage across multiple DIMMS which speeds up memory
I/O. Mixing DIMMS is a bad idea. Yes, it sucks that you have to "throw
away" your existing memory. This situation has long been the gripe of
many a sys-admin."

Michael Horton also pointed out that "mixing differently sized memory
modules is not a supported configuration according to the above
statement.  it may (and proabably will) work but in the case of a
service/support call, sun will ask that you restore the server to a
supported configuration."

So our plan at the moment is to leave the server as it is, and wait
until we have enough memory to upgrade the whole lot to 1Gb DIMMS.

Thanks again,

-Mark

--original message follows--

Hi all,

I have a query about adding memory to a dual-processor Sun Fire V240. I
have looked at the related documents (handbooks on SunSolve), but could
still do with some clarification. If anyone could clear this up, it
would be much appreciated - as usual, I will provide a summary.

The server currently has 4Gb, made up of 512Mb DIMMS in all 8 sockets.

The plan is to leave 2 Gbs of this in place, and add 4x 1Gb DIMMS to
take the total to 6Gb. As each CPU has 4 sockets available, The layout
for each CPU will look like :

512Mb DIMM
512Mb DIMM
1Gb DIMM
1Gb DIMM

However, the Sun handbook for the server says "DIMMS must be identical"
and "Do not mix DIMM capacities". It is not clear whether this refers to
the system as a whole, each CPU, socket or bank. Could anyone who has
upgraded their memory confirm whether this configuration will work ?
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