The critical role of a host bus adapter (HBA) in storage area networks

In simple terms, a host bus adapter (HBA) provides I/O processing and physical connectivity between a server and storage. This white paper describes HBAs provide critical server CPU off-load, freeing servers to perform application processing, and how they provide a critical link between the SAN and the operating system and application software. In this role the HBA enables a range of high-availability and storage management capabilities, including load balancing, failover, SAN administration and storage management. (Dec. 2002)