User manual

FC0054607-00 A Glossary-3
Fibre Channel and Converged Network Adapters for VMware ESX/ESXi 4.0
User’s Guide
fabric switch
Also, switched fabric. Connects multiple
devices from independent Fibre
Channel-arbitrated loops (FC-ALs) and
point-to-point topologies into a fabric using
Fibre Channel switches.
Fast!UTIL
QLogic Fast!UTIL™ Fibre Channel
Adapter BIOS utility.
FC
Fibre Channel is a high-speed serial inter-
face technology that supports other higher
layer protocols such as SCSI and IP.
FCode
Forth code. A type of boot code for use on
Sun
®
's SPARC
®
or Macintosh
®
hardware
platforms. See also boot code and Flash.
FCoE
Fibre Channel over Ethernet. A new
technology defined by the T11 standards
body that allows traditional Fibre Channel
storage networking traffic to travel over an
Ethernet link by encapsulating Fibre
Channel frames inside Layer 2 Ethernet
frames. For more information, visit
www.fcoe.com
.
Fibre Channel
See FC.
Fibre Channel over Ethernet
See FCoE.
FL_Port
Fabric loop port. In a Fibre Channel, the
fabric switch is capable of Fibre Channel
Arbitrated Loop operations and is
connected to one or more NL_Ports by a
Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop. An
FL_Port becomes a shared entry point for
public NL_Port devices to a Fibre Channel
fabric. FL_Ports are intermediate ports in
virtual point-to-point links between end
ports that do not reside on the same loop,
for example NL_Port to FL_Port to F_Port
to N_Port through a single Fibre Channel
fabric switch.
Flash
Non-volatile memory where the boot code
is saved. At times, Flash and boot code
are used interchangeably.
generic port
See G_Port.
G_Port
Generic port. A port that can operate as
either an E_Port or an F_Port. A G_Port
can determine operating mode at switch
port initialization, F_Port when an N_Port
attachment is determined, E_Port when an
E_Port attachment is determined. See
E_Port, F_Port, FL_Port, L_Port, N_Port,
NL_Port
HBA
Host bus adapter. See adapter.
input/output control
See ioctl.
intelligent storage peripheral
See ISP.
inter-switch link
See ISL.
ioctl
Input/output control. A system call in
Unix/Linux systems. Allows an application
to control or communicate with a device
driver outside usual read/write operations.