Dell Serial Attached SCSI 5iR Integrated and Adapter - Manual (Page 61)

Glossary 59
Glossary
This section defines or identifies technical terms,
abbreviations, and acronyms used in this document.
A
Adapter
An adapter enables the computer system to access
peripheral devices by converting the protocol of one
bus or interface to another. An adapter may also
provide specialized function. Adapters may reside
on the system board or be an add-in card. Other
examples of adapters include network and
SCSI adapters.
B
BIOS
(Basic Input/Output System) The part of the
operating system in a system that provides the lowest
level interface to peripheral devices. BIOS also refers
to the Basic Input/Input Output System of other
“intelligent” devices, such as RAID controllers.
BIOS Configuration Utility
The BIOS Configuration Utility configures and
maintains user configurable controller parameters.
The utility resides in the controller BIOS and its
operation is independent of the operating systems on
your system. The BIOS Configuration Utility, also
known as Ctrl-C, is built on elements called controls.
Each control performs a function.
C
Controller
A chip that controls the transfer of data between
the microprocessor and memory or between the
microprocessor and a peripheral device such as a
physical disk or the keyboard. In Storage
Management, the hardware or logic that interacts
with storage devices to write and retrieve data and
perform storage management. RAID controllers
perform RAID functions such as striping and
mirroring to provide data protection.
D
Disk
A non-volatile, randomly addressable, rewriteable
mass storage device, including both rotating magnetic
and optical storage devices and solid-state storage
devices, or non-volatile electronic storage elements.
DKMS
DKMS stands for Dynamic Kernel Module Support.
It is designed to create a framework where kernel
dependent module source can reside so that it is very
easy to rebuild modules as you upgrade kernels. This
will allow Linux vendors to provide driver drops
without having to wait for new kernel releases while
also taking out the guesswork for customers
attempting to recompile modules for new kernels.
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