Dell™ Serial-Attached SCSI Host Bus Adapter 5/i Integrated and 5/E Adapter User's Guide
This section defines or identifies technical terms, abbreviations, and acronyms used in this document.
A
Adapter
An adapter enables the computer system to access peripheral devices by converting the protocol of one bus or interface to another. An adapter may also provide specialized function. Adapters may reside on the system board or be an add-in card. Other examples of adapters include network and SCSI adapters.
B
BIOS
(Basic Input/Output System) The part of the operating system in a system that provides the lowest level interface to peripheral devices. BIOS also refers to the Basic Input/Input Output System of other "intelligent" devices, such as RAID controllers.
BIOS Configuration Utility
The BIOS Configuration Utility configures and maintains user configurable adapter parameters. The utility resides in the adapter BIOS and its operation is independent of the operating systems on your system. The BIOS Configuration Utility, also known as Ctrl-C, is built on elements called controls. Each control performs a function.
Bus
Bus consists of electrical pathways, which move information between basic components of the computer. A computer's bus can be divided into two different types, Internal and External.
The Internal Bus connects the different components inside the case: The CPU, system memory, and all other components on the motherboard. It's also referred to as the System Bus.
The External Bus connects the different external devices, peripherals, expansion slots, I/O ports and drive connections to the rest of the computer. It is generally slower than the system bus. Another name for the External Bus, is the Expansion Bus.
D
Disk
A non-volatile, randomly addressable, rewriteable mass storage device, including both rotating magnetic and optical storage devices and solid-state storage devices, or non-volatile electronic storage elements.
DKMS
DKMS stands for Dynamic Kernel Module Support. It is designed to create a framework where kernel dependent module source can reside so that it is very easy to rebuild modules as you upgrade kernels. This will allow Linux vendors to provide driver drops without having to wait for new kernel releases while also taking out the guesswork for customers attempting to recompile modules for new kernels.
Driver
A device driver, often called a driver for short, is a program that allows the operating system or some other program to interface correctly with a peripheral device such as a printer or network PC card. Some device drivers, such as network drivers must be loaded from the config.sys file (with a device= statement) or as memory-resident programs (usually, from the autoexec.bat file). Others such as video drivers must load when you start the program for which they were designed.
DUD (Driver Update Diskette)
Acronym for driver update diskette. A DUD is an image of a diskette stored as a regular file. To use it, you have to create a real diskette from this file. The steps used to create the diskette depend on how the image is supplied.
E
Enclosure
A structure, such as a system, which contains physical disks that are grouped together to create virtual disks.
F
Firmware
Software stored in read-only memory (ROM) or Programmable ROM (PROM). Firmware is often responsible for the behavior of a system when it is first turned on. A typical example would be a monitor program in a system that loads the full operating system from disk or from a network and then passes control to the operating system.
Flash Memory
Flash memory is a compact, solid-state, rewriteable, non-volatile memory device that retains its data when the power is turned off. It offers fast access time, low power consumption, and relative immunity to severe shock or vibration. It is a special type of EEPROM that can be erased and reprogrammed in blocks instead of one byte at a time. Many modern PCs have their BIOS stored on a flash memory chip so that it can easily be updated if necessary. Such a BIOS is sometimes called a flash BIOS.
H
Hardware
The mechanical, magnetic, electronic, and electrical components making up a computer system constitutes its hardware.
Host Bus Adapter (HBA)
HBA is an acronym for Host Bus Adapter. Adapter cards typically install into a server's I/O bus and connect the server to a storage device or storage network. This is similar to the way an ethernet card connects a computer to a network.
Hot Add/Remove
It is the addition/removal of a component while the system is running and operating normally.
L
Link
A connection between any two PCI Express devices is known as a link.
M
MB
1 Megabyte = 1,048,576 bytes. However, when referring to the hard-disk drive storage, the term is often rounded to mean 1,000,000 bytes.
MHz
Megahertz or one million cycles per second is a unit of frequency commonly used to measure the operating speed of a computer processor or any other electronic component.
O
Operating System
The software that runs a computer, including scheduling tasks, managing storage, and handling communication with peripherals and performs basic input/output functions, such as recognizing input from the keyboard, sending output to the display screen, etc. is called an operating system.
P
PCI Express (PCI-E)
PCI Express is an evolutionary upgrade to the existing Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus. PCI Express is a serial connection that operates more like a network than a bus. Instead of one bus that handles data from multiple sources, PCI-E has a switch that controls several point-to-point serial connections. These connections fan out from the switch, leading directly to the devices where the data needs to go. Every device has its own dedicated connection, so devices no longer share bandwidth like they do on a normal bus.
PHY
The interface required to transmit and receive data packets transferred across the serial bus. Each PHY can form one side of the physical link in a connection with a PHY on a different Dell-qualified end device. The physical link contains four wires that form two differential signal pairs. One differential pair transmits signals, while the other differential pair receives signals. Both differential pairs operate simultaneously (full duplex) and allow concurrent data transmission in both the receive and the transmit directions.
Physical Disk
A physical disk (also known as hard disk drive) consists of one or more rigid magnetic discs rotating about a central axle, with associated read/write heads and electronics. A physical disk is used to store information, (data), in a non-volatile and randomly accessible memory space.
POST
POST, short for Power-On Self-Test is a process performed before the operating system loads when the computer is turned on. The POST tests various system components, such as RAM, the hard disk drives, and the keyboard.
R
ROM
Read-only memory (ROM), also known as firmware, is an integrated circuit programmed with specific data when it is manufactured. ROM chips are used not only in computers, but in most other electronic items as well. Data stored in these chips is nonvolatile i.e., it is not lost when the power is turned off. Data stored in these chips is either unchangeable or requires a special operation such as flashing to change.
RPM
RPM, short for "Red Hat Package Manager" is a package management system primarily intended for Linux. RPM installs, updates, uninstalls, verifies and queries software. RPM is the baseline package format of the Linux Standard Base. Originally developed by Red Hat for Red Hat Linux, RPM is now used by many Linux distributions. It has also been ported to some other operating systems such as NetWare by Novell.
S
SAS
Serial-Attached SCSI, SAS, is a serial, point-to-point, enterprise-level device interface that leverages the proven SCSI protocol set. The SAS interface provides improved performance, simplified cabling, smaller connectors, lower pin count, and lower power requirements when compared to parallel SCSI.
SATA
Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, a physical storage interface standard, is a serial link that provides point-to-point connections between devices. The thinner serial cables allow for better airflow within the system and permit smaller chassis designs.
SCSI
SCSI stands for "Small Computer System Interface," a processor-independent standard interface for system-level interfacing between a computer and intelligent devices including hard-drives, floppy disks, CD-ROM, printer, scanners and many more.
SCSIport
The SCSIport driver is a feature of the Microsoft® Windows® storage architecture, delivering SCSI commands to the storage targets. The SCSIport driver works well with storage using parallel SCSI.
SMART
Acronym for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology. The self-monitoring analysis and reporting technology (SMART) feature monitors the internal performance of all motors, heads, and drive electronics to detect predictable drive failures. This feature helps monitor drive performance and reliability, and protects the data on the drive. When problems are detected on a drive, you can replace or repair the drive without losing any data. SMART-compliant disks have attributes for which data (values) can be monitored to identify changes in values and determine whether the values are within threshold limits. Many mechanical failures and some electrical failures display some degradation in performance before failure.
Storport
The Storport driver has been designed to replace SCSIport and work with Windows 2003 and beyond. In addition, it offers better performance for storage adapters, providing higher I/O throughput rates, improved manageability, and an upgraded miniport interface.
W
Windows
Microsoft Windows is a range of commercial operating environments for computers. It provides a graphical user interface (GUI) to access programs and data on the computer.
