Sun has extended the interoperability of Sun StorEdgeTM Traffic Manager by enabling support for multi-pathing failover and load balancing use within the Windows 2003 server operating environment (Standard, WEb and Enterprise editions) and making it interoperable by providing load balancing across all paths to symmetric storage devices within the IBM AIX 4.3.3 and IBM AIX 5.1 operating environments. In addition, it is now supported as well for failover use with Sun StorEdgeTM 9900 arrays and within the Microsoft Clustering Services (MSCS) configurations. Mesh support for switches has been enhanced by providing the capability to manage multiple data paths.

The benefits of these new enhancements include the quick, easy access administrators now have to the state and path configuration of Sun disk arrays and systems attached to the SolarisTM Operating System (Solaris OS), Microsoft Windows (NT EE, 2000, 2003 server), IBM AIX, and HP-UX operating environments through a common storage interface.

Load balancing between data paths enables the transmission of data within the SAN over multiple paths. Data path fail-over and fail-back to SAN-attached disks improve overall system availability. For the Sun StorEdgeTM 3510FC, T3, and 6120 arrays, a "least-used" algorithm is used; essentially, when an IO is issued, it is sent down the data path with the lowest usage rate. For the Sun StorEdge 9900 series, an "LBA hashing" algorithm will be used in the next release, which is expected during March/April 2004.

The support provided for multiple Sun disk arrays and disk system types enables SAN-attached host servers to access LUNs from entry level to data center instead of forcing customers to segregate which server talks to which array/system. This feature improves both storage utilization and management overhead cost efficiencies.

Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager software 3.1 may not be used to provide redundant boot volumes, nor may the Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) used with volumes managed by Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager software be used for booting the servers. In addition, two supported Fibre Channel (FC) HBAs of the same type and firmware level must be installed in the supported server prior to installing Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager software version 3.1.

The product is licensed in increments of 1, 5 and 25 RTUs; one RTU license must be purchased for each server on which the Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager software multi-pathing FC driver is to be installed.

With the dynamic database configuration, feature, an administrator is no longer required to manually add a new storage device. Instead, the Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager software automatically recognizes the storage device and dynamically adds it to the Sun StorEdge Traffic Manager software database without requiring any manual intervention on the part of the administrator.

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