IBM DS4000 FC manual Overview, Fibre Channel defined

Chapter 1. Preparing and installing the IBM System Storage DS4000 FC 4Gbps PCI-X Single/Dual Port HBA

This chapter contains instructions for preparing and installing the IBM System Storage DS4000 FC 4Gbps PCI-X Single/Dual Port HBA and describes the adapter components. The IBM System Storage DS4000 FC 4Gbps PCI-X Single/Dual Port HBA is referred to throughout this book as the FC 4Gbps PCI-X Adapter.

Overview

The IBM System Storage DS4000 FC 4Gbps PCI-X Single/Dual Port HBA is a 4Gbps high-performance, direct memory access (DMA), bus master, Fibre Channel host adapter designed for high-end systems. The function and performance are derived from the ISP2422 chip (see Figure 2 on page 4) making this FC 4Gbps PCI-X Adapter a leading-edge host adapter.

The ISP2422 chip combines a powerful, reduced instruction set computer (RISC) processor, a Fibre Channel protocol manager (FPM) with one 4 GB Fibre Channel transceiver, and a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) or peripheral component interconnect-extended (PCI-X) local bus interface in a single-chip solution. The FC 4Gbps PCI-X Adapter supports all Fibre Channel (FC) peripheral devices that support private-loop direct attach (PLDA) and fabric-loop attach (FLA).

The FC 4Gbps PCI-X Adapter connects the following:

vMainframe computers

vSuper computers

vWorkstations

vStorage devices

vServers

Fibre Channel defined

Fibre Channel technology is outlined in the SCSI-3 Fibre Channel Protocol (SCSI-FCP) standard. Fibre Channel is a high-speed data transport technology used for mass storage and networking.

Using a Fibre Channel Arbitrated loop (FC-AL), 126 Fibre Channel devices can be supported, compared to 15 small computer system interface (SCSI) devices with Ultra SCSI.

The FC 4Gbps PCI-X Adapter uses a multimode shortwave optical interface for distances up to 500 meters when operating at 1Gbps, 300 meters when operating at 2Gbps, and 150 meters when operating at 4Gbps.

The FC 4Gbps PCI-X Adapter is a 4Gbps Fibre Channel device that supports data transfer rates up to 400MB per second half-duplex and 800MB per second full-duplex on optical interfaces.

© Copyright IBM Corp. 2006 1