ida(7)                                                        ida(7)


       NAME
             ida - Intelligent Drive Array Controllers

       DESCRIPTION
             The Compaq IDA is drive array technology used to distribute
             data across a series of hard disks.  It unites these hard
             disks into a single higher-performance logical drive.  The
             drive array is managed by the Compaq IDA Controllers.  At the
             present time the IDA family of controllers consists of 4
             members:

                   IDA controller

                   IDA-2 controller

                   IDA-E controller

                   SMART controller

             IDA and IDA-2 controllers are designed to interface to disk
             drives configured with IDE interface, whereas IDA-E and SMART
             controllers interface to SCSI disk drives.  All these
             controllers have the same command interface, so they all can
             be controlled by a single device driver.  These controllers
             have the ability to provide fault tolerance of the connected
             drives, treat one or more physical drives as one logical
             drive, and optionally provide write cache for the same drives.

             The ida host adapter subsystem enables SCSI target drivers
             (such as sd01, st01, and so on) to communicate on the SCSI bus
             with target controllers and logical units. This driver
             implements the Portable Device Interface (PDI) for such PDI
             target drivers.

             It is also possible to issue SCSI commands using the pass-
             through driver interface.  This allows you to issue sb control
             blocks directly to the target controller.  To find the
             appropriate device to use, while any device is being accessed
             through the target driver (for example, sd01), use the
             B_GETDEV ioctl to get the major and minor numbers of the
             pass-through node.  This node may be created and opened for
             pass-through use (SDI_SEND ioctl).

          ioctl Calls
             The following ioctl(2) commands are supported by this driver:



                           Copyright 1994 Novell, Inc.               Page 1

      ida(7)                                                        ida(7)


            SDI_SEND
                  Sends a pass-through command (SCSI control block) to a
                  target controller, bypassing the associated target
                  driver.

            B_GETTYPE
                  Returns the bus name (for example, SCSI) and device
                  driver name of a specific device.

            B_REDT
                  Reads the extended Equipped Device Table (EDT) data
                  structure that is stored in the ida driver's internal
                  data structure.

         Files
            /usr/include/sys/ida.h
            /usr/include/sys/scsi.h
            /usr/include/sys/sdi.h
            /usr/include/sys/sdi_edt.h
            /etc/conf/pack.d/ida/space.c

      REFERENCES
            ioctl(2), sc01(7), sd01(7), st01(7), sw01(7)

























                          Copyright 1994 Novell, Inc.               Page 2