PowerPath
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
PowerPath is EMC Corporation's multi-path management software for storage networks.
It is server-resident software that manages a server's use of multiple paths to a storage device. Typically this is implemented to improve resilience and protect against failure in the storage network.
In some cases, very high-performance servers may require multiple paths to a storage device in order to improve performance by balancing load across several paths.
PowerPath was originally created by Conley Corporation and was sold under the "SafePathz" name. Although available directly from Conley, most sales came through licensing deals with Hitachi Data Systems and EMC. When EMC licenced SafePath from Conley they marketed the product as PowerPath. In 1998 EMC acquired Conley for less than US $50m.
PowerPath was originally designed to mask multiple paths, especially important in Windows environments, and detect failed paths. Over time, functionality has been expanded to include automatic load-balancing, automatic path management and dynamic reconfiguration.
PowerPath's major competitor, among Multipath I/O drivers not provided by Operating System Vendors, is Dynamic Multipathing (DMP), developed by Veritas Software and later acquired by Symantec.
