User`s guide

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Persistent Device Naming – Dynamic Storage Discovery Devices that are congured within
the Solaris OS Storage Multipathing software maintain their device naming through reboots
or reconguration.
Multipathing Software Features
The Solaris 10 OS contains the Sun StorageTek Trac Manager software. The software is
enabled by default for x86-based platforms and optional for SPARC-based platforms. The
software contains the following features:
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Path management – The Sun StorageTek Trac Manager software dynamically manages
the paths to any storage devices it supports. The addition or removal of paths to a device is
done automatically when a path is brought online or removed from a service. This feature
enables hosts congured with the software to begin with a single path to a device and add
more host controllers, increasing bandwidth and RAS, without changing device names or
modifying applications. Sun storage does not require conguration les to manage or
databases to keep current. For storage other than Sun, contact your storage vendor for
methods to enable support and to ensure it is qualied with the Sun StorageTek Trac
Manager software.
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Single Device Instances – Unlike other multipathing solutions, the Sun StorageTek Trac
Manager software is fully integrated with the Solaris 10 OS. The software displays multipath
devices as single device instances instead of as one device, or device link, per path. This
feature reduces the cost of managing complex storage architectures utilities such as
format(1M) or Sun Solaris OS Volume Manager, to “see” one representation of a storage
device instead of a separate device for each path.
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Failover support – Implementing higher levels of RAS requires redundant host
connectivity to storage devices. The Sun StorageTek Trac Manager software manages the
failure of storage paths while maintaining host I/O connectivity through available secondary
paths.
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Symmetrical/Asymmetrical device support– The Sun StorageTek Trac Manager
software supports the following disk storage devices:
– All Sun disk storage, both symmetric and asymmetric
– All T10/T11 standards-compliant non-Sun symmetrical disk devices
– Many non-Sun asymmetrical disk arrays
Note – T10 ALUA support has been added for asymmetrical devices that support this T10
standard. Contact your storage vendor to see whether your device is supported.
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I/O load balancing – In addition to providing simple failover support, the Sun StorageTek
Trac Manager software can use any active paths to a storage device to send and receive
I/O. With I/O routed through multiple host connections, bandwidth can be increased by the
Software Features
Chapter 1 • Product Overview 17