Patent ID: 7860103

Claim:
A method of loop initialization in a fiber channel arbitrated loop, the loop including a plurality of connectivity devices and a plurality of sets of drives, each set of drives being connected to one of the connectivity devices, the method comprising: acquiring, at a selected connectivity device, a unique arbitrated loop physical address; and acquiring, at each drive in a set of drives attached to the selected connectivity device, a shared arbitrated loop physical address, the shared arbitrated loop physical address being part of a set of shared arbitrated loop physical addresses shared among the connectivity devices, each drive in the set of drives being uniquely addressable using a pairing of the shared loop physical address associated with each of the drives in the set of drives and the unique arbitrated loop physical address associated with the selected connectivity device; and further comprising, at the connectivity device: blocking the set of drives attached to the connectivity device from being part of initialization of the loop; and forcing the set of drives attached to the connectivity device to acquire certain arbitrated loop physical addresses based on bit settings in initialization frames.