Multipathing software enables you to define and control redundant physical paths to I/O devices such as storage devices and network interfaces. If the active path to a device becomes unavailable, the software can automatically switch to an alternate path to maintain availability. This capability is known as automatic failover. To take advantage of multipathing capabilities, you must configure the server with redundant hardware, such as redundant network interfaces or two host bus adapters connected to the same dual-ported storage array.
For the servers, different types of multipathing software are available:
Oracle Solaris IP Network Multipathing (IPMP) software provides multipathing and load-balancing capabilities for IP network interfaces. This software includes commands and other software resources for server administration. For information about Oracle Solaris IPMP, refer to Administering TCP/IP Networks, IPMP, and IP Tunnels in Oracle Solaris 11.3.
Oracle Solaris Multipathed I/O (MPxIO) enables I/O devices to be accessed through multiple host controller interfaces from a single instance of the I/O device. For information about Oracle Solaris I/O multipathing, refer to Managing SAN Devices and Multipathing in Oracle Solaris 11.3.
Oracle Solaris Datalink Multipathing (DLMP) is a type of network datalink aggregation that provides high availability across multiple switches without requiring switch configuration. DLMP aggregation supports link-based failure detection and probe-based failure detection to ensure continuous availability of the network to send and receive traffic. For information about DLMP refer to Managing Network Datalinks in Oracle Solaris 11.3.