Fiber Optic Wiki

A SCSI host adapter

July 5, 2011

A SCSI host adapter connects a SCSI bus to a computer. The host adapter bridges the physical and logical chasm that separates the SCSI bus from the host computer's internal bus. Modern host adapters contain all the electronics and firmware required to execute SCSI transactions, and often include a BIOS that not only allows the host system to boot from a SCSI device, but also facilitates configuration of the host adapter. Typically a device driver, linked to the operating system, controls the host adapter itself.

Host bus adapter

July 5, 2011

Today, the term host bus adapter (HBA) is most often used to refer to a Fibre Channel interface card. Fibre Channel HBAs are available for all major open systems, computer architectures, and buses, including PCI and SBus (obsolete today). Each HBA has a unique World Wide Name (WWN), which is similar to an Ethernet MAC address in that it uses an OUI assigned by the IEEE. However, WWNs are longer (8 bytes). There are two types of WWNs on a HBA; a node WWN (WWNN), which is shared by all ports on a host bus adapter, and a port WWN (WWPN), which is unique to each port. There are HBA models of different speeds: 1Gbit/s, 2Gbit/s, 4Gbit/s, 8Gbit/s, 10Gbit/s and 20Gbit/s.

SAS and SATA

July 5, 2011

SAS or serial-attached SCSI is the current connectivity to replace the previous generation parallel-attached SCSI (PAS) devices. Ultra320 was the highest level of parallel SCSI available, but SAS has since replaced it as the highest-performing SCSI technology.

Interconnect bottleneck

July 5, 2011

The interconnect bottleneck, the point at which integrated circuits (ICs) reach their capacity, is expected sometime around 2010.

Port and WWN zoning

July 4, 2011

Zoning can also be applied to either switch ports or end-station names.

A virtual storage area network

July 4, 2011

In computer networking, a virtual storage area network (VSAN) is a collection of ports from a set of connected Fibre Channel switches, that form a virtual fabric. Ports within a single switch can be partitioned into multiple VSANs, despite sharing hardware resources. Conversely, multiple switches can join a number of ports to form a single VSAN.

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