Patent ID: 8250281

Claim:
A method of data communications through a host Fibre Channel adapter (‘HFCA’), the method implemented on a computer, the computer comprising random access memory (‘RAM’) operatively coupled to at least one computer processor, the computer coupled for data communications through the HFCA and a Fibre Channel switch of a Fibre Channel fabric to one or more data storage devices, the computer further comprising two or more logical partitions, the logical partitions administered by a hypervisor, each logical partition assigned a portion of the RAM of the computer, each logical partition executing an application program, each logical partition comprising a separate instance of an operating system, each instance of an operating system further comprising an instance of a low-level, switched fabric input/output (‘I/O’) library, and the method comprising: establishing, in the HFCA by instances of the I/O library in two or more logical partitions and by the hypervisor, separate logical Fibre Channel adapters (‘LFCAs’) for at least two of the logical partitions, each LFCA comprising an association of an LFCA identifier with at least one range of I/O memory addresses in the address space of a logical partition; and transferring, at the behest of application programs in the two or more logical partitions, data between the RAM of the logical partitions and the data storage devices through the LFCAs, the HFCA, and the Fibre Channel fabric.