Patent ID: 7769913

Claim:
A method of initializing a network storage system, the method comprising: reading a persistent serial number from an InfiniBand-compliant circuit card within the network storage system, the InfiniBand-compliant circuit card including a non-volatile memory (NVRAM) and a cluster interconnect adapter; assigning at least a portion of the serial number as an InfiniBand local identifier (LID) of a port of the InfiniBand-compliant circuit card, the LID being assigned without requiring any communication between the InfiniBand-compliant circuit card and any entity external to the network storage system; using the LID to communicate between the NVRAM and a system memory of the network storage system which is external to the InfiniBand-compliant circuit card; and using the LID to access the NVRAM by local direct memory access (LDMA) and to access a memory of an external cluster partner of the network storage system by remote direct memory access (RDMA), in one Peripheral Connect Interface (PCI) transaction.