Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) is available as a component of Veritas Storage Foundation and High Availability products, or as a stand-alone product. DMP provides multi-pathing functionality for the operating system native devices configured on the system. There are several use cases for disabling DMP, including:
- Opting to use multipath I/O (MPIO) multi-pathing in the Virtual I/O (VIO) client
- Upgrading DMP
- Uninstalling DMP
- Disabling DMP paths through a host bus adapter (HBA) when upgrading HBA firmware
When you use Storage Foundation on AIX in the VIO client with virtual SCSI devices, DMP can co-exist with MPIO multi-pathing. However, if you choose to use MPIO multi-pathing, you can disable DMP in the VIO client. For information on disabling DMP in the VIO client, see:
Disabling DMP multi-pathing for vSCSI devices in the Virtual IO Client, after installation
When you upgrade DMP or Storage Foundation on AIX and the root volume group (rootvg) is managed by DMP, you may need to temporarily disable and re-enable support for the rootvg. For information on disabling DMP support for the rootvg during upgrade, see:
You may also need to disable DMP support for native devices when completely removing DMP from the system. For more information on disabling DMP native support when uninstalling DMP, see:
Disabling DMP native support when Uninstalling DMP with the Veritas Web-based installer
In certain situations, such as upgrading firmware, you may want to perform maintenance operations on the array ports or array adapters in your data center. In such situations, you may want to temporarily disable the DMP paths that connect the array adapter to the storage, and re-enable the paths after the maintenance operations are completed. When you temporarily disable the DMP paths on an array port or an array adapter, the communication to the storage is maintained through an alternative path.
Veritas Operations Manager lets you disable the DMP paths by choosing specific arrays in your data center.
For more information on using Veritas Operations Manager to disable and enable DMP paths on an array, see:
Alternately, you can disable paths to an array using the vxdmpadm command. For more information on using the command line interface (CLI) to disable DMP paths, see:
Disabling I/O for paths, controllers, array ports, or DMP nodes
For more information on administering DMP, refer to the following:
Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing Installation Guide
Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing Administrator's Guide
Veritas Operations Manager Management Server Administrator's Guide
DMP documentation for other releases and platforms can be found on the SORT website.
