Glossary

fabric element

Any active director or node in a switched fabric.

fabric port

Physical interface within the fabric that connects to an N_Port through a point-to-point full duplex connection.

failover

Automatic and non-disruptive transition of functions from an active FRU that has failed to a backup FRU.

FCC-IOC

See Fibre Channel I/O controller.

FE-MIB

See Fibre Channel fabric element.

fiber

Physical media types supported by the Fibre Channel specification, such as optical fiber, twisted pair, and coaxial cable.

fiber optics

Branch of optical technology concerned with the transmission of light pulses through fibers made of transparent materials such as glass, fused silica, and plastic.

fiber port module card

Each fiber port module card provides four Fibre Channel connections through duplex small form factor (SFF) pluggable fiber-optic transceivers.

Fibre Channel

Integrated set of standards recognized by ANSI which defines specific protocols for flexible information transfer. Logically, a point-to-point serial data channel, structured for high performance.

Fibre Channel fabric element

Any device linked to a fabric. Information about these devices is recorded in a management information base (MIB) which can be accessed by fabric management software.

Fibre Channel I/O controller

A device that controls the embedded Fibre Channel port and configures the ports’ ASICs.

field-replaceable unit

Assembly removed and replaced in its entirety when any one of its components fails.

firmware

Embedded program code that resides and executes on the director.