Host Bus Adapters (HBA)

What are these?

DEFINITION

A host bus adapter (HBA) is a circuit board and/or integrated circuit adapter that provides input/output (I/O) processing and physical connectivity between a host system, or server, and a storage and/or network device.

Because an HBA typically relieves the host microprocessor of both data storage and retrieval tasks, it can improve the server's performance time. An HBA and its associated disk subsystems are sometimes referred to as a disk channel.

HBAs are typically defined by interconnect technology, speed, port count and system interface. An HBA is sometimes called an HBA card. The HBA card often plugs into the PCI Express (PCIe) slot of a server. Other HBA form factors include mezzanine cards for blade servers.

Although the term HBA applies to a variety of interconnects, it is most commonly used with storage protocols such as Fibre Channel (FC) and serial-attached SCSI (SAS). A SAS HBA is a type of Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) HBA, but the term SCSI HBA is no longer in widespread use. A SCSI HBA typically is associated with parallel SCSI, a once popular data transfer technology that has largely been displaced by faster SAS.

**We carry various types, for example Ethernet adapters, fibre channel adapters, various port sizes. Regarding manufacturers', we have host bus adapters from EMC, NetApp, Sun, Dell, HP, IBM, and many more. You can see our wide selection of refurbished or new host bus adapters here in our online store. You can find information about the product itself, together with availability, specifications, and our price for the adapter. If you have found a match for your system, you can easily buy it through our online store as well.**