Interface Board

1. There is a slot for one Interface Board (IB) in the system (see Figure D-1). The IB provides circuitry for disk drives using fibre channel arbitration loop (FC-AL) interfacing.

2. The system can have up to eight internal fiber optic disk drives, which are controlled by Gigabit Interface Converters (GBICs) mounted on the IB. The GBICs are hot-pluggable. The GBICs on the IB connect by cables to GBICs on the I/O+ board(s).

3. The IB has Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) circuitry to support up to eight internal fiber optic disk drives. Two GBICs (in slots LA and UA) on the IB connect through cables to GBICs on the I/O+ board. The remaining GBIC slots (LB and UB) on the IB can be used for redundant interfacing to another I/O+ board or (with the proper software) to an entirely separate system.

4. One GBIC can control up to four fiber optic disk drives (disk bays 0 to 3 in the lower bank, or bays 4 to 7 in the upper bank). Reserve bay 0 for the boot drive.

5. There are two FC-AL loops for the internal disk drives. The lower loop connects disks 0 to 3 (lower disk bays); the upper loop connects disks 4 to 7 (upper disk bays).