ATTO Technology FC-42ES, FC-44ES, FC-42XS, FC-41XS, FC-21PS, FC-22XH, FC-24XL Glossary

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2 Fibre Channel is a key technology for storage

Fibre Channel is a serial communications technology designed to transfer large amounts of data among a variety of hardware systems over long distances. It is a key technology for applications that require shared, high bandwidth access to storage.

Fibre Channel provides a logical, point-to-point, serial channel for the transfer of data between a buffer at a source device and a buffer at a destination device. It moves buffer contents from one port to another, without regard to the format or meaning of the data so different upper level

protocols are able to run over Fibre Channel hardware.

The Fibre Channel architecture is structured as a hierarchical set of protocol layers. Defined within these layers are rules for signal interfaces, serial encoding and decoding, error control, frame format and communications protocols.

Glossary

Some terms used in the Fibre Channel industry are defined below. More information is available through the ATTO Technology web site (www.attotech.com), the Fibre Channel Industry Association (www.fibrechannel.com), Cern (www.cern.ch), the Storage Area Networking Industry Association (www.snia.org), and the Fibre Channel Consortium (www.iol.unh.edu/consortiums, click on FC).

Term

Definition

ANSI

American National Standards Institute

arbitrate

process of selecting one L_Port from a collection of ports which ask for use of the arbitrated loop

 

at the same time

arbitrated loop

a loop topology (FC-AL) in which two or more ports are interconnected, but only two ports can

 

communicate at one time; low-cost solution which may or may not use hubs and switches

auto negotiation

hardware senses and automatically responds depending on configuration

BER

Bit Error Rate: a measure of transmission accuracy; the ratio of bits received in error to bits sent

bit

smallest unit of data a computer can process: a single binary digit with a value of either 0 or 1

bus

a collection of unbroken signal lines used to transmit information from one part of a computer

 

system to another; taps on the lines connect devices to the bus

byte

an ordered set of 8 bits

channel

a point-to-point link which transports data from one point to another

CPU

Central Processing Unit: the portion of the computer that actually performs computations

CRC

Cyclic Redundancy Check: an error-correcting code which calculates a numeric value for received

 

and transmitted data; if no error has occurred during transmission, the CRC for both received and

 

transmitted data should be the same

destination

a value in the frame header of each frame which identifies the port in the node where the frame is

address

being sent

device driver

a program that allows a microprocessor to direct the operation of a peripheral device

DMA

Direct Memory Access: a way to move data from a storage device directly to RAM without using

 

the CPU’s resources

DMA bus master

allows a peripheral to control the flow of data to and from system memory by block as opposed to

 

allowing the processor to control the data by bytes (PIO or programmed I/O)

9 ATTO Technology Celerity FC Storage Adapters Installation and Operation Manual

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Contents Celerity FC Storage Adapters Page Page Contents Updating hardware flash Troubleshooting Hardware installationConfiguring and updating drivers Fibre Channel is a key technology for storageAtto provides Fibre Channel solutions Celerity FC-42ES AdapterSoftware specifications Celerity FC-44ES AdapterPCI bus specifications Celerity FC-42XS AdapterCelerity FC-41XS Adapter Celerity FC-21PS Adapter Celerity FC-22XH Iopc specifications Celerity FC-24XLCelerity FC Storage Adapters Product FeaturesCelerity Selection Guide Term Definition Fibre Channel is a key technology for storageGlossary LED System requirements Hardware installationInstallation Fibre Channel addressFC-42ES Adapter FC-44ES Adapter FC-42XS Adapter SFP LC optical Connector FC-41XS AdapterSFF duplex LC optical connector FC controller FC-21PS AdapterFC-22XH Storage Adapter On-board hubSFP LC optical Connectors FC controllers PCI-X connectorFC-24XL Advanced Storage Adapter Page Windows 2000/XP/Server Configuring and updating driversInitial configuration Upgrading your existing Celerity FC driverPage New or previous installation Mac OS X driver installation, updateLinux driver installation, update To update hardware flash on a PC using the Bios utilities To update hardware flash in all operating systemsLaunch the Configuration Tool Updating hardware flashMac OS TroubleshootingIf devices are not accessible General suggestionsSelect Device Manager LinuxSelect Properties Canadian standards Appendix a Standards and compliancesFCC standards radio and television interference European standardsUsage restrictions Scsi solutions Appendix B AccessoriesFibre Channel and iSCSI solutions Optical CablesUltra Product Features Appendix C Scsi adapter selection guideAppendix D Contact Atto Technology, Inc
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