topic PowerPath Vs Multipath. in Operating System - HP-UX

PowerPath Vs Multipath.

jeevarajis — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:36:21 GMT

Dear All,

Need some clarification,

What is exact difference between Powerpath and multipath. In my setup I know that servers (11.23) are configured through powerpath as am getting output from powermt display command, then what multipath is it inbuild with OS, how we can check the same.

Thanks in advance.

Re: PowerPath Vs Multipath.

Torsten. — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:40:06 GMT

If there is more than 1 way to go from server to a storage LUN, you have multiple pathes.

Native hp-ux 11.23 can handle multiple pathes, but doesn't do any kind of load balancing.
This came with 11.31.

So with 11.23 any vendor of storage arrays has its own solution for doing such multipathing/load balancing, one of them is powerpath, others are autopath/securepath etc.

Re: PowerPath Vs Multipath.

Kapil Jha — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 02:24:57 GMT

powerpath/multipath/securepath etc etc

are all the solutions which enables the load balancing for IOs from various FCs on the server.

If you are referring multipath to that used in Linux GNU dm-multipathing, then these are just separate solutions from separate vendor doing more or less same work.

BR,
Kapil+