VITESSE INTROS DUAL-PORTED FIBRE CHANNEL ENCLOSURE MANAGEMENT CONTROLLER FOR THE STORAGE MARKET.Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. (Nasdaq:VTSS VTSS Vehicle Theft Security System VTSS Vancouver Technical Secondary School ) recently unveiled the VSC120 Dual-Ported Fibre Channel Enclosure Management Controller. This device controls and monitors the environment within a storage enclosure, such as power, fans, intrusion and temperature. With its diagnostic capabilities and dual 1Gb/s or 2Gb/s Fibre Channel ports, the VSC120 can monitor the status of each disk drive to provide IT managers a proactive means of finding and diagnosing problems. The VSC120 is ideal for Fibre Channel Disk Array, JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) A group of hard disks in a computer that are not set up as any type of RAID configuration. They are just a bunch of disks. JBOD - Just a Bunch Of Disks , RAID subsystem, switch and server designs where data availability, reliability, hardware redundancy and autonomous diagnostic support is required. The VSC120 includes a 32-bit, 53MHz RISC RISC in full Reduced Instruction Set Computing Computer architecture that uses a limited number of instructions. RISC became popular in microprocessors in the 1980s. CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. that operates in initiator and/or target modes for diagnostic flexibility, two integrated 1Gb/s and 2Gb/s Fibre Channel serial transceivers for backward compatibility and redundant data paths. Four I2C serial interface bus master controllers and two UARTs assist in firmware development and out-of-band communication via the Intelligent Platform Management Interface The Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) specification defines a set of common interfaces to computer hardware and firmware which system administrators can use to monitor system health and manage the system. Several dozen companies support IPMI. (IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) A protocol for monitoring server hardware for temperature, voltage, chassis intrusion, etc. Introduced in 1998 by Intel, HP, NEC and Dell, IPMI defines a standard set of messages for the characteristics of hardware ). To reduce board space, the VSC120 provides on-chip fan speed monitoring and PWM control, and up to 34-bits of user definable general purpose I/O with eight external interrupts. A VSC120 Software Development Kit (SDK) is available to simplify implementation by providing customers quick development of a complete SCSI-3 Enclosure Services (SES) and IPMI solution. The embedded firmware capabilities of the VSC120 not only accelerate time to market, but let storage system architects differentiate their products via firmware and improved diagnostics. A key strength of the VSC120 is the ease in which it interoperates with Fibre Channel port bypass circuits (PBC PBC 1 Peripheral blood cells 2 Primary biliary cirrhosis, see there ) and loop switches, to provide a complete JBOD control chipset. When coupled with the VSC7147 2Gb/s Fibre Channel Hex PBC or the VSC7192 12-Channel Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop Switch, the VSC120 can disconnect a disk drive from the loop, perform diagnostics, and report status to the host without interrupting data flow to other resources within the enclosure. |
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