Terminology
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Terminology
3ware SAS/SATA RAID Controller CLI Guide, Version 9.5.2
uses the
following terminology:
Logical Units.
Usually shortened to “units.” These are block devices
presented to the operating system. A logical unit can be a one-tier, two-tier, or
three-tier arrangement. Spare and Single logical units are examples of one-tier
units. RAID 1 and RAID 5 are examples of two-tier units and as such will
have sub-units. RAID 10 and RAID 50 are examples of three-tier units and as
such will have sub-sub-units.
Port.
3ware controller models up to the 9650SE series have one or many ports
(typically 4, 8, 12, 16, or 24). Each port can be attached to a single disk drive.
On a controller such as the 9650SE with a multilane serial port connector, one
connector supports four ports. On 9690SA series controllers, connections are
made with phys and vports (virtual port).
Phy.
Phys are transceivers that transmit and receive the serial data stream that
flows between the controller and the drives. 3ware 9690SA controllers have 8
phys. These “controller phys” are associated with virtual ports (vports) by
3ware software to establish up to 128 potential connections with SAS or
SATA hard drives. Each controller phy can be connected directly to a single
drive, or can be connected through an expander to additional drives.
VPort.
Connections from 3ware 9690SA controllers to SAS or SATA drives
are referred to as
virtual ports
, or VPorts. A VPort indicates the ID of a drive,
whether it is directly connected to the controller, or cascaded through one or
more expanders. The VPort, in essence, is a handle in the software to uniquely
identify a drive. The VPort ID or port ID allows a drive to be consistently
identified, used in a RAID unit, and managed. For dual-ported drives,
although there are two connections to a drive the drive is still identified with
one VPort handle.
For additional information about 3ware controller concepts and terminology,
see the user guide that came with your 3ware RAID controller or the user
guide portions of the 3ware HTML Bookshelf.
Note:
For practical purposes, port and VPort are used interchangeably in this
document in reference to a drive (or disk). Therefore, unless otherwise specified,
the mention of port implies VPort as well. For example, when “port” is used to
indicate a drive, it is implied that for the applicable controller series, the reference
also applies to VPort.
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