50 Netra 440 Server System Administration Guide • August 2004
Multipathing Software
Multipathing software lets you define and control redundant physical paths to I/O
devices, such as storage devices and network interfaces. If the active path to a device
becomes unavailable, the software can automatically switch to an alternate path to
maintain availability. This capability is known as automatic failover. To take
advantage of multipathing capabilities, you must configure the server with
redundant hardware, such as redundant network interfaces or two host bus adapters
connected to the same dual-ported storage array.
For the Netra 440 server, three different types of multipathing software are available:
■Solaris IP Network Multipathing software provides multipathing and
load-balancing capabilities for IP network interfaces.
■VERITAS Volume Manager (VVM) software includes a feature called Dynamic
Multipathing (DMP), which provides disk multipathing as well as disk load
balancing to optimize I/O throughput.
■Sun StorEdge™ Traffic Manager is an architecture fully integrated within the
Solaris OS (beginning with the Solaris 8 release) that enables I/O devices to be
accessed through multiple host controller interfaces from a single instance of the
I/O device.
For More Information
For information about setting up redundant hardware interfaces for networks, refer
to the Netra 440 Server Installation Guide (817-3882-xx).
For instructions on how to configure and administer Solaris IP Network
Multipathing, consult the IP Network Multipathing Administration Guide provided
with your specific Solaris release.
For information about VVM and its DMP feature, see “Volume Management
Software” on page 52 and refer to the documentation provided with the VERITAS
Volume Manager software.
For information about Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager, refer to the Netra 440 Server
Product Overview (817-3881-xx) and refer to your Solaris OS documentation.