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US 2004/0174888 A1Published application
Path balancing apparatus and method
AssigneeStorage Technology Corporation
InventorsBarry Lynn Bradford, Mark C. Briel
Life of this patent
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AssigneeStorage Technology Corporation
InventorsBarry Lynn Bradford, Mark C. Briel
Estimating the term…
An apparatus and method for workload balancing along multiple communication paths to a plurality of devices. The apparatus includes a controller that accumulates path usage information and a path balancing device that makes use of the accumulated path usage information to perform a path balancing operation. The path balancing method involves the path balancing device calculating the total expected connect time for all I/O messages issued to each of a plurality of peripheral devices during a predefined sampling period. These totals are then added for each communication path for the sampling period to obtain path totals. The path totals are then compared to see if a difference between the highest used path and the lowest used path is greater than a threshold amount. If the difference is higher than the threshold amount, the peripheral device having a total expected connect time that is closest to a target value is moved from the highest used path to the lowest used path.
A method of balancing path usage over a plurality of paths from at least one first device to a plurality of second devices, comprising:
A method of balancing communication path usage over a plurality of communication paths from at least one open system device to a plurality of peripheral devices, comprising:
A computer program product in a computer readable medium for balancing path usage over a plurality of paths from at least one first device to a plurality of second devices, comprising:
A path balancing apparatus that balances the path usage over a plurality of paths from at least one first device to a plurality of second devices, comprising:
A path balancing system in which path usage over a plurality of paths from at least one first device to a plurality of second devices is balanced, comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.