11iv3 multipathing vs emc powerpath

[Peter Marais]

Anyone done any testing on performance comparing 11iv3 with and without powerpath installed on EMC storage. Also are there any white papers available covering this topic?

[Tim Nelson]

Might wish to check what EMC has to say.

With 11iv3 powerpath and/or securepath are no longer needed.

[Steve Post]

I know PowerPath costs money. PowerPath watches the performance of the various paths to the disks. PowerPath constantly changes the paths to go the fastest way it can. The method it uses to decide which path is fastest? Unknown to me. But there is some type of programming there.

If one connection to a disk goes away? EMC PowerPath would find that dead path is very inefficient. It would decide to mark that path dead, and use a live, working path instead.

Now you say 11iv3 has this capability? (I'm not using 11iv3 here yet).

Steve

[Tim Nelson]

Yep, 11iv3 has load-balanced multi-path ( obsoletes SecurePath and others ).

http://www.docs.hp.com/en/5992-3373/ch04s06.html

[Steve Post]

Well... I looked up the doc.
http://www.docs.hp.com/en/5992-3373/ch04s06.html
And a saw a product brief about it.
http://docs.hp.com/en/MassStorageStack1/ProductBriefv1.2.pdf
It sounds like a PowerPath. Except HP wrote it. And it is part of the OS.

I do see the work "designed" was replaced with silly management term "architected". But we're talking about (I mean dialoging orbitationism in pursuit of), a management brochure.

Looks like scsimgr is the command to run a man page on.

[Torsten.]

Useful?

http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-60130/scsimgr_esdisk.7.html

[Peter Marais]

Hi Guys

Yes,what I am looking for is some comparison running with powerpath and without. I know 11iv3 has all the functunallaty of powerpath and is built into the OS but emc wrote powerpath spesifically around emc storage. So the question is to use or not to use? Pricing is not a factor.

[Torsten.]

See

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1114544

and

http://docs.hp.com/en/11822/storagemulti-pathing-HPUX-SG.pdf

(page 14 - bottom)

and

http://www.hp.com/products1/serverconnectivity/mass_storage_devices.html

[Peter Marais]

Thanks Torston

We do not run SG and we have already established that the latest Powerpath (v5.1) is supported on 11iv3.