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bodnarg

2 Intern

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385 Posts

2383

January 2nd, 2009 12:00

HP-UX 11.31 native multipathing

We have a development system which has been upgraded to HP-UX 11v3. Our system administrators have asked if they should/need to load PowerPath to attach to our DMX-4 or if we can support native multipathing.

I did some searching on Powerlink and found the minimum OS/DMX requirements (all of which we meet) and also the required FA settings we will need to make on the actual ports or via symmask.

What I can't find is a reason to recommend using or not using powerpath instead of the native multi-pathing. We just want failover/load balancing on this host which the native multipathing seems to do. Can't see why we'd want to load Powerpath if we don't need it since it is just another thing to patch/upgrade/break.

Anyone have any strong reasons to go with PowerPath on HP-UX 11v3?

xe2sdc

2 Intern

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2.8K Posts

January 5th, 2009 15:00

Let me pull out my EMC hat for a moment .. (but just for a moment) .. If you need basic failover, the good old LVM is fine. HPUX 11v3 includes a brand new and powerfull multipath in kernel .. in my experience it works fine but the interface is at least brand new so your sysadmins have to learn brand new concepts, tools and options. In case you already use PowerPath on other systems, I'd stick with PP to have an unique management of storage paths. But nothing stronger (at least right now before Epiphany) against "native" multipath .. :D

Conor

341 Posts

January 6th, 2009 00:00

We have discussed this before here on the forum, http://forums.emc.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=56914&tstart=0
But it was pretty inconclusive!
HP-UX multipathing is a relatively new product, PowerPath is a mature product with many extra features. (including the migration enabler)

bodnarg

2 Intern

 • 

385 Posts

January 6th, 2009 05:00

Good info - I couldn't find this thread searching but see it is already over a year old and no real experience. Hoping that now that the feature has been out for over a year someone might chime in with some experiences.

Out system administrators are fine with working with the new native tool which is the way we are leaning. Looking for a strong technical (performance or functional) reason why Powerpath may be better.

I opened a case with SAC asking the same question and so far have not gotten any technical reasons PowerPath would be better. They said they would do some research and see if any performance tests had been done between PowerPath and native multipathing which was the only area they thought there might be an obvious advantage.

Thanks.

Anesh-nr-uW

10 Posts

January 29th, 2009 14:00

Did anyone find which one is better load balancing software.

what I find is native load balancing gives (round-robin bydefault )..this is what we are using. but I am not sure which policy is better. With power path we always used adaptive load balancing policy.

two questions:
which one is better ? (Power path or native load balancing)
if native load balancing which policy is better for DMX devices ?

regards
Anesh

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