Front-end and Back-end Side
Disk array controller provides front-end interfaces and back-end interfaces.
- Back-end interface communicates with controlled disks. Hence protocol is usually ATA (a.k.a. PATA; incorrectly called IDE), SATA, SCSI, FC or SAS.
- Front-end interface communicates with a computer's host adapter (HBA, Host Bus Adapter) and uses:
- one of ATA, SATA, SCSI, FC; these are popular protocols used by disks, so by using one of them a controller may transparently emulate a disk for a computer
- somewhat less popular protocol dedicated for a specific solution: FICON/ESCON, iSCSI, HyperSCSI, ATA over Ethernet or InfiniBand
A single controller may use different protocols for back-end and for front-end communication. Many enterprise controllers use FC on front-end and SATA on back-end.
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