A controller for positioning on a shelf of a cabinet within a mass storage system
for controlling communication among device enclosures in a reporting group. The
controller includes an interface to a data communication loop linking device enclosures
each including disk drives positioned on one or more cabinets. The interface is
used to transmit control commands. A cabinet bus interface controller is provided
and linked to a cabinet bus in the cabinet to receive enclosure reporting messages
from the device enclosures to collect environment information. The cabinet bus
interface transmits reporting messages onto the cabinet bus to provide environmental
information. The interface controller determines the shelf location of the controller
within the cabinet from signals on the cabinet bus and receives the cabinet identifier
over the cabinet bus. A processor is linked to the interface controller and functions
to create and issue the control commands to the loop interface.
