SANsurfer FC HBA Manager User’s Guide Management Tool for QLogic FC and FCoE Adapters
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Device
A computer subsystem, such an adapter card, which mediates data in a computer network. The term “device” is used inter- changeably with “target” and “target device”. See FCoE.
Driver
Software that interfaces between the file system and a physical data storage device or network media.
The level structure for Windows drivers is as follows:
Class driver is the highest driver level. There is a separate class for disk, Ethernet, and so on. This level handles all generic aspects of operations for that class.
Port driver is the middle driver level, which handles aspects of the operation specific to the port type; for example, there is a port driver for SCSI.
Miniport driver is the lowest driver level and device specific. This level is usually supplied by the manufacturer as a companion to a physical device.
Monolithic driver level combines the functions of different driver levels in the same driver to increase performance.
Adjunct driver level works along side a driver at the same level to increase performance.
In NetWare, the required drivers include:
Host Adapter Module (HAM) is the driver component associated with the host adapter hardware. It provides the functionality to route requests to the bus where a specified device is attached.
Custom Device Module (CDM) is the driver component associated with storage devices. It provides the functionality to build
In Red Hat/SUSE Linux, the driver layers include:
SCSI Upper Layer is the device management layer. It handles
SCSI Middle Layer is the SCSI traffic handling layer. It directs requests between the kernel and the SCSI.
SCSI Lower Layer is the SCSI adapter driver. It communicates directly to the SCSI adapter.
The structure for Solaris SPARC/x86 drivers includes:
Nexus drivers provide bus mapping and translation services to subordinate nexus and leaf devices. These include drivers for
Leaf drivers provide the traditional character and block driver interfaces for reading and writing data to storage and communication devices. These include drivers for peripheral devices, including QLA2xxx adapters, disks, tapes, network adapters, and frame buffers.
In Macintosh, the driver layers include:
Upper Layer is the device manage- ment layer. It handles
Middle Layer is the SCSI traffic handling layer. It directs requests between the kernel and the SCSI.
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