HP Fibre Channel Mass Storage Adapters Support Guide FibrChanl-01 (fcd) Driver, September 2009

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://docs.hp.com/en/
netcom.html#Fibre%20Channel
It is also available on the HP-UX Instant Information CD delivered with your HP-UX product
updates.
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