With an emphasis on extended failover, EMC Corp. has released a new version
of its PowerPath software that includes full end-to-end automated path failover
for networked storage environments — the first such capability in the
network-storage market, according to EMC officials.
PowerPath’s automated path failover extends from the server, through the network
switch to the storage system. In the case of
failure, PowerPath’s latest enhancements enable the server to continue
processing I/O requests to an alternate Fibre Channel adapter on the EMC
Symmetrix Enterprise storage system in the event of
path failure.
Failover is becoming one of the hottest areas of network storage, adding
another layer of redundancy to network storage. In the event of an I/O path
failure, instead of having that single point of failure being a dead end (thus
negatively impacting the network), the storage network is smart enough to
reroute application data and storage data to either another host bus adapter or
to an alternate Symmetrix Fibre Channel adapter.
Also new in the upgraded PowerPath release is support for Novell NetWare 5.0
(SP6a), 5.1 (SP2) and Novell Cluster Services 1.1. Previously PowerPath supported
Windows NT/2000, IBM AIX, Sun Solaris, HP-UX and Compaq Tru64.