HP Fibre Channel Mass Storage Adapters Support Guide FibrChanl-01 (fcd) Driver

B Additional Features
This chapter discusses the SNIA Application Programming Interface that can be used with the Fibre
Channel Host Bus Adapters.
Fibre Channel SNIA HBA API
Software applications managing SANs require information from host bus adapters (HBAs) to
operate. Every vendor, operating system, and platform provides HBA information differently.
The HP Fibre Channel Storage Network Industry Association Host Bus Adapter Application
Programming Interface (FC SNIA HBA API) is a C library interface that was created to provide a
common HBA API library for all Fibre Channel HBA vendors, and a vendor specific API library for
HP supported Fibre Channel adapters. The API is part of the driver software. It is loaded when you
install the driver.
HP created the FC SNIA HBA API for programmers who want to use this API to write applications
for managing SANs. This API can be used with the Fibre Channel host bus adapters using the FCD
driver.
At a high level, the common HBA library handles multiple vendor implementations of the API by
dynamically loading libraries. At a lower level, a vendor-provided library provides vendor-specific
implementations of the API.
The FC SNIA HBA API supports multithreading and OLAR on OLAR supported platforms and
adapters.
The Fibre Channel SNIA HBA API Programmer's Guide is available at: http://
bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c02018677/c02018677.pdf
It is also available on the HP-UX Instant Information CD delivered with your HP-UX product updates.
34 Additional Features