Product specifications

B – Glossary
B-2 FC0051101-00 A
Driver Driver refers to software that interfaces between the file
system and a physical data storage device or network media.
The level structure for Windows NT/Windows 2000 drivers
is as follows:
❑ Class Driver. This is the highest driver level. There is a
separate class for disk, Ethernet, etc. This level handles
all generic aspects of operations for that class.
❑ Port Driver. This is the middle driver level, which
handles aspects of the operation specific to the port type;
for example, there is a port driver for SCSI.
❑ Miniport Driver. This is the lowest driver level and
device specific. This level is usually supplied by the
manufacturer as a companion to a physical device.
❑ Monolithic Driver. This level combines the functions
of different driver levels in the same driver to increase
performance.
❑ Adjunct Driver. This level works along side a driver at
the same level to increase performance.
In NetWare, the required drivers include:
❑ Host Adapter Module (HAM). HAM is the driver
component associated with the host adapter hardware.
It provides the functionality to route requests to the bus
where a specified device is attached.
❑ Custom Device Module (CDM). CDM is the drive
component associated with storage devices. It provides
the functionality to build device-specific commands
from I/O messages received from NetWare’s Media
Manager.
Fabric A fabric consists of cross-connected Fibre Channel devices
and switches.
Fabric switch A fabric switch connects multiple devices from independent
Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loops (FC-ALs) and
point-to-point topologies into a fabric.
Failover path The failover path software feature ensures data availability
and system reliability by assigning alternate pathing and
automatic adapter failover for device resources. This is a
feature in the High Availability version of QLconfig.
GUI GUI stands for Graphical User Interface. GUI is a style of
system control based on pictures and diagrams instead of
text commands.