Patent ID: 7373443

Claim:
An article of manufacture comprising code implemented in an expander for interfacing storage units with an external device coupled to the expander through a first physical interface or a second physical interface, wherein the storage units are inserted in slots in a storage enclosure, wherein the code causes operations to be performed, the operations comprising: communicating with one storage unit interfacing with the first physical interface when the storage unit is received in a first orientation with respect to one slot; and communicating with one storage unit interfacing with the second physical interface when the storage unit is received in a second orientation with respect to the slot, wherein the first and second physical interface supports different storage interconnect architectures, receiving a transmission from one storage unit in one slot coupled to the expander; maintaining information on storage interconnect architectures and transmission characteristics used for the storage interconnect architectures, wherein the storage interconnect architectures have transmission characteristics; determining the transmission characteristic of the received transmission; determining from the information the storage interconnect architecture associated with the determined transmission characteristics; using the information on the determined storage interconnect architecture to process the transmission and determine a transport layer for the received transmission, wherein there is one transport layer for each supported transport protocol; and forwarding the transmission to the determined transport layer.