hsx device question

[Spike Burkhardt]

All,

I am running Secure Path version 3.0C_SP1 on a Solaris 8 machine. When I do a 'spmgr display' it lists a hsx device name for each path, for instance hsx-2818-33-4. I have several questions.
1. Does the hsx instance have a 1 to 1 relationship to a device file?
2. Solaris 'sar' reports devices such as hsx840; do these devices map to a specific instance?
3. Does an IO request go to a sd device and then Secure Path take that disk IO request and pass it thru the active hsx path? If not, what is the path of an IO request?

Thanks for your help!

[Uwe Zessin · Accepted solution]

I don't have any experience with Solaris, but after a short look into the manual and a bit of experience on other OSes (HP-UX, Linux, Windows)...

1. the output of 'spmgr' looks pretty similar to that of other operating system implementation, so I'd say: yes.

3. there is a picture in the installation manual that shows the layering. Indeed, the I/O request goes from the Solaris disk driver to the 'swsp' driver which handles all paths and is then directed to the 'hsx' driver. The 'hsx' driver contains array-specific know-how, e.g. how to fail over a device. Then the I/O goes to the driver of the fibre channel adapter.