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Answer» The SAN (storage area network) components interact as follows:
- When a host wishes to access a storage device on the SAN, it sends out a blockbased access request for the storage device.
- The request is accepted by the HBA for that host and is converted from its binary data form to the optical form REQUIRED for transmission on the fiber optic cable.
- At the same time, the request is “packaged” according to the rules of the Fibre Channel protocol.
- The HBA transmits the request to the SAN.
- Depending on which port is used by the HBA to connect to the fabric, one of the SAN switches receives the request and CHECKS which storage device the host wants to access. From the host perspective, this APPEARS to be a specific disk, but it is actually just a LOGICAL device that corresponds to some physical device on the SAN. It is up to the switch to determine which physical device has been made available to the host for its targeted logical device.
- Once the switch has determined the appropriate physical device, it passes the request to the appropriate storage device.
The SAN (storage area network) components interact as follows:
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