Glossary
Manual No. 775029
G-11
Fault tolerance (failure tolerance)
The ability of a system to continue to perform its function even when one of
its components has failed. For a system to be fault tolerant requires
redundancy in disk drives, power supplies, adapters, controllers and cabling.
Mylex RAID controllers offer high levels of fault tolerance.
Fibre Channel
A technology for transmitting data between computer devices at a data rate
of up to 1 Gbps (one billion bits per second), especially suited for connecting
computer servers to shared storage devices and for interconnecting storage
controllers and drives. Fibre Channel is expected to replace SCSI Parallel
Interface as the preferred transmission interface between servers and
clustered storage devices. It is also more flexible; devices can be as far as ten
kilometers (about six miles) apart. The longer distance requires optical fiber
as the physical medium. However, Fibre Channel also works using coaxial
cable and ordinary telephone twisted pair.
File Server
A computer shared by users over a Local Area Network (LAN). A file server
provides access to files by the users on a LAN. Other types of servers
perform application services (for example, mail servers, web servers) rather
than just store files.
Flash ROM
A memory on the adapter containing software that can be reprogrammed
without removing it from the board.
Format
A pre-established layout for data. Programs accept data as input in a certain
format, process it, and provide it as output in the same or another format. All
data is stored in some format with the expectation that it will be processed by
a program that knows how to handle that format.
