Introduction to HBA (Host Bus Adapter)

So, we'll be learning about storage fundamentals and hardware building blocks and the company that we are going to be talking today is going to be host bus adapter. So, what's this has behaved and where do we see it? That's exactly what we're going to be looking at so if you look at what a storage area network is. It is a dedicated network only for initiators to talk to the targets. Now initiators are the hosts and targets are normally the storage devices like you have your what's J bond. What is a bunch of disks just a bunch of this fantastic? So, the other day we talked about what's a difference between a J bonded disk array. The only difference is you have a RAID controller and tape devices you have type release also now they have mentioned about high-end disk arrays like clarion or symmetries. So, what's this how is a normal disk array different from an intelligent disk array or high-end disk array they have in addition to just a bunch of disks in addition to the cache they also have what's called as the RAID controller. They also have what's called as the storage operating systems.

Examples-

Examples of these high-end disk arrays, we already know glad you're on symmetric science and all that we were on during the course you have these are called as the elements of the fabric. No, you have hubs routers switches you know various devices so the most common hubs. The switches are the Cisco's which is the brackets which is the magnet as witches we die BAM type in C type switches. You have the server and the server has this adapter called host bus adapter. Now what's the purpose of this host bus adapter we have scuzzy commands being sent from the server to the storage array right the purpose of this HBA is to send and receive scuzzy commands. This is the old edge. It just looks like any other network interface card right in your local area networking in your normal pcs you would have what's called as the Ethernet card or your NIC card. This looks very similar to that. This edge does the same thing what a NIC card does to a local area network or an Ethernet network.

Thus, it has the small component called as a jibik. It sends and receives Kazi commands now this adapter card when plugged into the server or host. It has the small component called as G which stands for gigabit interface converter. These have a transmitter and a receiver. If I could draw you have a transmission port and a receiving port. So, if you have a fiber-optic cable, the signals in the fiber optic cables is obviously optical signals right so and your computer does not understand optical signals so somebody has to convert these optical signals to electrical signals. So, this gigabit interface converter converts optical to electrical signals and you know vice versa when information is transferred from these systems to these storage devices. It converts electrical to optical and sense all. The name gigabit interface converter because it can transmit and received data at the speed of one gigabit per second (1GBPS).

SFP (Small Form-Factor Pluggable)-

Let's learn about an edge behave with a different component called as SFP. SFP stands for small form-factor pluggable. This component can be removed. GBA also can be removed by the way, the J-SSP these are all hot pluggable modules. They are also called as transceivers because they have this transmission port and a receiving port. Small form-factor pluggable does exactly what you do. Just that it supports higher speeds more than 1GB per second. There are connectors such as the fiber optic cables which we were talking about. Always the cables have two wires one for transmitting, one for receiving.