International Business Machines Corporation

Joseph Thomas Writz

Timothy J Schimke

Lee Anton Sendelbach

Ellen Marie Bauman

Robert Edward Galbraith

Brian Eric Bakke

Troy David Armstrong

James Lee Naylor

Thomas Richard Crowley

Kenneth Gerald Linn

Data communications through a host Fibre Channel adapter ('HFCA') implemented with a computer that includes two or more logical partitions, each logical partition including a separate instance of an operating system, each instance of an operating system including an instance of a low-level, switched fabric input/output ('I/O') library, including establishing, in the HFCA by instances of the I/O library in two or more logical partitions and by the hypervisor, separate logical Fibre Channel adapters (&#x2018;LFCAs&#x2019;) for at least two of the logical partitions, each LFCA including an association of an LFCA identifier with at least one range of I/O memory addresses in the address space of a logical partition and transferring, at the behest of application programs in the two or more logical partitions, data between the RAM of the logical partitions and the data storage devices through the LFCAs, the HFCA, and the Fibre Channel fabric.

Data communications between the computer memory of the logical partitions and the data storage devices through a host fibre channel adapter

Data communications through a host Fiber Channel adapter ('HFCA') implemented with a computer that includes two or more logical partitions, each logical partition including a separate instance of an operating system, each instance of an operating system including an instance of a low-level, switched fabric input/output ('I/O') library, including establishing, in the HFCA by instances of the I/O library in two or more logical partitions and by the hypervisor, separate logical Fiber Channel adapters (&#x2018;LFCAs&#x2019;) for at least two of the logical partitions, each LFCA including an association of an LFCA identifier with at least one range of I/O memory addresses in the address space of a logical partition and transferring, at the behest of application programs in the two or more logical partitions, data between the RAM of the logical partitions and the data storage devices through the LFCAs, the HFCA, and the Fiber Channel fabric.

Data communications through a host fibre channel adapter

An apparatus, method and program product provide access for a host device to a shared resource via a spare adapter configured to replace any of a plurality of access adapters.

Method and apparatus for providing redundant access to a shared resource with a shareable spare adapter

An apparatus, program product and method for managing a number of physical connections to a peripheral device. A multipath driver provides a logical connection interface to a client. This interface allows the client to efficiently access the peripheral device over one or more of the physical connections. In so doing, the logical connection interface associates connections with a primary connection, deletes inactive connections from memory, as well as updates and uses a list of active connections to seamlessly route data to the peripheral device.

Multiple connection management system

In a redundant array of disk storage units which independently accesses data blocks on different units and which uses parity blocks for data protection, parity blocks are confined to specific address ranges of each respective disk unit (rows of the array), each row containing multiple parity blocks. Each parity block represents the exclusive-OR of a stripe of data blocks located on a diagonal of the array. Where data accesses exhibit locality of reference in certain rows, this arrangement distributes the burden of updating parity more equally than a conventional RAID level 5. Additionally, because a 'row' corresponds to a particular annular region of a disk surface on each respective disk unit, parity blocks can be located at optimal logical addresses or physical regions of the disk surface to simplify address translation and/or further improve performance.

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Rochester, MN, United States of America

Joseph Thomas Writz