Storage gateway initiator for fabric-backplane enterprise servers

A non-transitory computer readable medium having a set of instructions stored therein which when executed by a computer causes the computer to perform functions comprising:

• providing software-process-visible state via one or more dedicated hardware registers for each of a plurality of logical storage interfaces;
• receiving initial mass storage system control information;
• configuring a mass storage interface in accordance with the mass initial storage system control information, comprising communicating the mass initial storage system control information via a switch fabric;
• accessing final mass storage system control information via the mass storage interface after the configuring of the mass storage interface;
• reconfiguring the mass storage interface in accordance with the final mass storage system control information, comprising communicating the final mass storage system control information via the switch fabric;
• and
• wherein the computer is one of a plurality of physical partitions of a physically partitionable symmetric multiprocessor, each physical partition is enabled to communicate packets via at least one respective partition input/output controller coupled to a respective one of a plurality of physical ports of the switch fabric, the packet communicating is enabled at least in part by the respective partition input/output controller being enabled to send at least some of the packets as cells addressed to physical port addresses corresponding to the physical ports, and each physical partition comprises links between processors of the physically partitionable symmetric multiprocessor, the links being programmatically configurable to selectively isolate subsets of the processors with respect to respective shared memory coherency and cache memory coherency transactions.

A method comprising:

• in one of a plurality of physical partitions of a physically partitionable symmetric multiprocessor, receiving initial mass storage system control information and in response determining a configuration of a mass storage interface in accordance with the initial mass storage system control information;
• providing software-process-visible state via one or more dedicated hardware registers for each of a plurality of logical storage interfaces;
• accessing final mass storage system control information via the mass storage interface after the determining of the mass storage interface configuration;
• reconfiguring the mass storage interface in accordance with the final mass storage system control information, comprising communicating the final mass storage system control information via a switch fabric;
• and
• wherein each physical partition is coupled to the switch fabric via at least one respective partition input/output controller coupled to a respective one of a plurality of physical ports of the switch fabric, the partition input/output controllers being enabled to communicate packets at least in part by sending at least some of the packets as cells addressed to physical port addresses corresponding to the physical ports, and each physical partition comprises links between processors of the physically partitionable symmetric multiprocessor, the links being programmatically configurable to selectively isolate subsets of the processors with respect to respective shared memory coherency and cache memory coherency transactions.