HP Surestore Disk Array FC60 HP SureStore E Disk Array FC60 Service Manual (A5 - Page 395

EPROM Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory. fabric A Fibre Channel term that describes a crosspoint switched network, which is one of three existing Fibre Channel topologies. A fabric consists of one or more fabric elements, which are switches responsible for frame routing. A fabric can interconnect a maximum of 244 devices. The fabric structure is transparent to the devices connected to it and relieves them from responsibility for station management. FC-AL See Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL). fibre A generic Fibre Channel term used to cover all transmission media specified in the Fibre Channel Physical Layer standard (FC-PH), including optical fibre, copper twisted pair, and copper coaxial cable. fibre optic cable An optical fibre cable made from thin strands of dielectric material such as glass through which data in the form of light pulses is transmitted by laser or LED. Fibre optic cable is used for high-speed transmission over medium to long distances. Fibre Channel Logically, a bidirectional, full-duplex, point-to-point, serial data channel structured for high performance capability. Physically, Fibre Channel interconnects devices such as host systems and servers, FC hubs, and disk arrays through ports, called N_Ports, in one of three topologies: a point-to-point link, an arbitrated loop, or a crosspoint switched network, which is called a fabric. Fibre Channel can interconnect two devices in a point-to-point topology, from two to 126 devices in an arbitrated loop, and up to 224 devices in a fabric switched topology. The disk array default topology is arbitrated loop. Fibre Channel is a generalized transport mechanism that has no protocol or native I/O command set, but can transport any existing protocol, such as SCSI in Fibre Channel frames. Fibre Channel is capable of operating at speeds of 100 MB/s (full speed), 50 MB/s (half speed), 395 Glossary