Installation and Reference Guide HP StorageWorks Secure Path 3.0F Service Pack 4 for HP-UX 11i v1.0 and 11i v2.0 (5697-8001, March 2009)

• Determines the status of available storage units and physical paths through path verification dia-
gnostics
• Monitors and identifies failed paths and failed over storage units
• Facilitates static load balancing, which allows movement of devices between controllers
• Automatically restores failed-over storage units to repaired paths with auto failback enabled
• Implements anti-thrash filters to prevent failover or failback caused by marginal or intermittent
conditions
• Improves data throughput and increased bandwidth using dual RAID controllers configured in
multiple-bus mode operation with load balancing enabled
• Detects failures reliably without causing unnecessary failovers
• Implements failover or failback actions transparently without disrupting applications
• Facilitates remote management using the spmgr utility
• Supports configuring an EVA LUN as a system boot, swap, or dump device on HP-UX 11i v1.0
and HP-UX 11i v2.0
• Allows coexistence of Secure Path for Active-Passive disk arrays and Secure Path for Active-Active
disk arrays on the same host
• Allows connectivity of Active-Passive disk arrays and Active-Active disk arrays through the same
HBA
Software components
This section describes the software components of Secure Path for Active-Passive disk arrays for HP-UX,
including:
•Drivers
•Agent
• Management tools
• Controller ownership
• Path definition
Drivers
The following Secure Path drivers manage paths to a storage device while providing a single device
target to applications:
• swsp driver — A failover driver that is presented as a pseudo-HBA driver to system SCSI disk
drivers. This driver presents multiple paths of a LUN as a single device to the host SCSI disk driver.
It also initiates path failover when necessary and manages all kernel threads related to failover.
• hsx driver — An array-specific driver that provides paths from an HBA driver for specific arrays
up to the swsp driver. This driver manages the separate paths to a LUN and encapsulates array-
specific knowledge, such as specific commands to migrate a LUN from one controller to the other.
Figure 2 illustrates the driver model structure.
HP StorageWorks Secure Path 3.0F Service Pack 4 for HP-UX 11i v1.0 and 11i v2.0 15