This section describes how to configure the storage unit for host failover using IRIX multipathing.
IRIX multipathing does not perform dynamic load-balancing; it only provides path failover. You can achieve static load-balancing if you distribute the primary paths evenly across the controllers when you set up the failover groups in the /etc/failover.conf file.
When a failover occurs to the alternate path, you must use the /sbin/scsifo -s xxxx command to manually return to the primary path. Where xxxx is the pathname.
When you have a host system with multiple host bus adapters or multiple paths to the storage, IRIX automatically chooses the first path it encounters in the hardware tree as the path to the storage. To prevent this from occurring when you perform a static load-balance, you must configure the failover.conf file to point the I/O operations to the correct path. This ensures that you assign a failover path or a backup path for all I/O operations.
Host failover using IRIX multipathing requires the use of the XLV volume manager or in the case of IRIX clusters, the XVM volume manager.