About Oracle Solaris I/O Multipathing
The Oracle Solaris I/O multipathing feature, previously known as MPxIO, enables a system with Oracle Solaris operating system (OS) to access storage systems in multiple paths. Oracle Solaris I/O multipathing is based on the open standards for communicating with devices and device management interfaces, ensuring interoperability with other standard-based devices and software. I/O multipathing provides high availability for storage devices by using multiple connections. The Oracle Solaris I/O multipathing feature enumerates the storage devices discovered by the transport layer on your storage area network (SAN) or SAS domain.
Oracle Solaris I/O multipathing is enabled by default for SPARC-based and x86-based systems. Because Oracle Solaris I/O multipathing is enabled, the host probes all the connected devices automatically in a storage setup. For third-party devices, which do not configure automatically, you must configure the device to work with the Oracle Solaris I/O multipathing feature. For more information about device-specific configuration, see your storage array documentation. For more information about how to configure symmetric third-party devices that do not configure automatically, see Configuring Third-Party Storage Devices.
 | Caution - Do not disable I/O multipathing unless you are using a third-party multipathing solution or your third-party device documentation specifies to disable I/O multipathing. |
Oracle Solaris I/O multipathing is disabled only for tape devices. For more information, see Configuring Multipathing on Tape Drives.
This chapter provides an overview of the Oracle Solaris I/O multipathing feature and contains the following main topics: