The Next Generation Mass Storage Stack: HP-UX 11i V3

HP-UX 11i v3 introduces a new representation of mass storage devices called the agile view. The central idea of the agile view is that disk devices and tape drives are identified the actual object, not by a hardware path to the object. Paths to a device can change dynamically, and multiple paths to a single device can be transparently treated as a single virtualized path, with I/O distributed across those multiple paths. This representation increases the reliability, adaptability, performance, and scalability of the mass storage stack, all without the need for operator intervention. This paper discusses the next generation mass storage subsystem in HP-UX 11i v3.