This seminar covers Windows drivers for storage miniport drivers. These include drivers for SCSI controllers (SCSI host bus adapters), for Fibrechannel controllers, for IDE and SATA RAID adapters, and for other controllers for storage class devices.

Level

Intermediate

Audience

Driver developers and hardware engineers supporting adapters (controllers) for storage class controllers.

Description

Most controllers for storage class devices, other than those on a system's standard ATA/ATAPI controller, are handled in Windows by “storage miniport drivers” (formerly known as "SCSI miniport drivers"). These drivers are written to the "StorPort" model, a substantially different set of interfaces than the standard Windows driver model (WDM).

This seminar covers all you need to know to write a storage miniport driver for Windows – that is, to support a new SCSI host bus adapter or other storage class adapter. We cover all of the required and optional functional interfaces, walk through several common driver designs, and address different types of hardware (DMA vs. programmed I/O, etc.). Lab exercises allow you to immediately apply and reinforce the material just learned.

This seminar is also extremely valuable for storage controller hardware developers who need to optimize their device interfaces to perform well in the Windows environment. Any of several common mistakes in the controller interface design can make the driver’s job very difficult and inefficient. This seminar will show you how to avoid those pitfalls, resulting in a top-performing product.

Topics

• Windows I/O manager, device driver, and storage subsystem overview

• Windows driver development environment

• Windows storage class driver architecture

• Storage miniport driver structure and key data structures

• Required and optional driver routines and functionality

• Design issues and limitations

• Advanced topics

• Future directions and resources

Prerequisites

DRV150, Windows Internals for Driver Developers, or equivalent knowledge and experience. Attendees should understand the principles of demand-paged, virtual memory, multitasking operating systems. Attendees should also be familiar with the concepts of I/O device programming (in other words, driver coding on any other operating system or environment) and must have at least a reading knowledge of the C programming language. Prior experience writing storage or other drivers for Windows will be helpful, but is not required.

Windows versions

Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows 2000

Duration and formats

3 days with labs
2 days lecture only

Labs

Labs in this seminar include writing, building, installing, and debugging a complete storage miniport driver.