A method and system for emulating a hardware Internet Small Computer
System Interface (iSCSI) Host Bus Adapter (HBA) without risking an
interruption of communication between a computer and a remote secondary
storage device is presented. During normal operations, a (hardware
emulating) software HBA drives a Network Interface Card (NIC) to afford
communication between the computer and the remote secondary storage. If
an operating system (OS) anomaly occurs in the computer, the NIC is
normally disconnected by the OS. To maintain communication between the
computer and the secondary storage device if such an event occurs, a
failover network device is called up by the computer's System Management
Memory (SMM) Basic Input Output System (BIOS), which allows uninterrupted
communication to continue between the computer and remote secondary
storage device.