LVM alternate vs. SP (secure path)

[Khalil Hesam]

I don't know which is what I need, but what's the difference between these two (SP and LVM alternate paths)? As I can see LVM alternate paths will do redundancy for multiple paths to a storage in case of a failure, so should I use SP instead?

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Shalom,

LVM PV links alternate paths provides redundancy, two paths but no load balancing.

Secure Path has load balancing capabilities.

SEP

[Khalil Hesam]

Thanks for the answer!
So if my need is a simple redundancy, LVM is enough and I don't need secure path?
What if I use device mapper instead of SP? Does it have load balancing?

[Ronald Schwartz_1]

If you only care about redundancy then yes you can use PVLinks.
You can do load balancing with both PVLinks and SP, and EMC PowerPath. The difference is the depth and the level. PVLinks is a manual effort, you need to monitor, or wait for a call, and re-arrange the disk order in the volume group.
SecurePath and PowerPath do this automagically and they check at the switch level to optimize the load performance.

Even if your not concerned with load balancing now you should do it anyway, it will help you later.