METHOD AND APPARATUS TRANSFERRING FOR DATA BETWEEN INDEPENDENT FIBER CHANNEL ARBITRATED LOOPS IN AN INTERACTIVE INFORMATION DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM

摘要

A method and apparatus of utilizing a plurality of independent fiber channel arbitrated loops for moving, replicating and storing video information on storage devices in an interactive video information system. A plurality of servers are each comprised of a plurality of server modules. Each server module comprises a plurality of fiber channel (FC) disk drives coupled by a local port to a first independent, or “local” fiber channel arbitrated loop, to create a “virtual FC disk drive”, within each server module. The plurality of FC disk drives on each of the plurality of server modules are also coupled to a second or independent, or “backup” FC loop, via a backup port on each FC disk drive. By utilizing two independent FC loops in this configuration, data may be sequentially transmitted from a first server module, across the backup FC loop, to a second server module. Additionally, by coupling a FC switch to the backup independent loops of a plurality of servers, data may be transferred to and from a server module between each of the plurality of servers.