Introduction
MPxIO provides a multipathing solution for storage devices
accessible through multiple physical paths. MPxIO was initially
delivered by PSARC/1999/647. It abstracts physical paths to a device,
providing unified access via a single virtual device. Physical path
failures are transparently recovered, so failures are not exposed to
the applications using the virtual device.
The scsi_vhci driver registers with the MPxIO framework and is the virtual host controller providing the abstraction for SCSI protocol devices.
MPxIO Essentials - Presentation
- Take a look at MPxIO Essentials to view a presentation detailing the implementation of MPxIO in Solaris.
Release Status
- MPxIO is included as part of the distribution in Solaris 10 onward. So when you download OpenSolaris sources or a binary distributions, you will automatically have access to this capability.
- MPxIO for Tape is integrated in OpenSolaris sources. This release targeted tape drives with Fibre Channel connectivity only. Other protocols will be supported in subsequent releases.
Documentation
You will find the information on how to setup and use MPxIO here.
Sources
The majority of MPxIO source code is provided under the CDDL license.
The open source code for disk and tape MPxIO is provided as part of the current OpenSolaris code base.
Related PSARC Cases
- PSARC 1999/647 Multiplexed I/O Framework
- PSARC 2003/157 MPXIO interface updates
- PSARC 2004/504 Common Devid/GUID Encode Interfaces for SCSI Devices
- PSARC 2004/626 Multipath Management API support
- PSARC 2005/646 MDI/pHCI/libdevinfo Extensions for SNIA MPAPI support
- PSARC 2007/379 MPXIO/scsi_vhci failover-ops configuration - revisited
on 2009/10/26 12:15