Solution Brief

PowerPath Multipathing
Software
Optimize data paths in your physical and virtual environment with PowerPath and PowerPath Virtual Edition

PowerPath™ is host-based software that provides automated data path

management and load-balancing capabilities for heterogeneous server,
network, and storage deployed in physical and virtual environments. It
PowerPath Essentials enables you to meet your aggressive service levels with the highest
application availability and performance, and with all the advantages of the
Standardize data path industry's leading information storage systems. The PowerPath family
management across physical includes PowerPath Multipathing for physical environments for Linux and
and virtual environments Windows and PowerPath/VE Multipathing for VMware vSphere and Microsoft
Hyper-V virtual environments.

Multipathing Business Challenges

With constrained budgets and the rush to virtualize for better resource
utilization, many IT organizations are challenged to ensure application
availability and performance. With multiple vendor arrays, operating systems,
and virtual platforms, you need flexible and automated tools to manage your
data paths consistently and effectively.
Standardized Path Management
PowerPath is used by many Dell customers, and it is a leading path
management solution. Instead of using multi-point solutions, you can
standardize on a single offering across your evolving physical and virtual
Automate multipathing policies environments. PowerPath supports heterogenous servers, operating
and load balancing to provide systems, and Dell storage arrays. Leverage PowerPath application-
predictable and consistent transparent failover to insulate core business operations from any disruption
application availability and caused by a faulty path. Automatically optimize physical and logical I/O paths
performance across physical by using sophisticated load-balancing algorithms to ensure consistent and
and virtual environments predictable application availability and performance. Dell Technologies E-Lab
tested interoperability assures PowerPath multipathing support for many
Improve service-level combinations of servers, operating systems and storage.
agreements by eliminating
application impact from I/O
failures

PowerPath Data Sheet

PowerPath Data Sheet
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Dell, Dell or its or
Inc., subsidiaries
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 Automate Path Failover and Recovery for High Availability

PowerPath’s automated path failover and recovery eliminates the possibility of

disrupting an application due to the failure of an adapter, cable, or user error. In
the event of a path failover, all outstanding and subsequent I/O requests are
automatically directed to alternative paths. From mission-critical to lower
priority applications, your business remains online. This dynamic software’s
intelligent and dynamic path testing periodically probes inactive paths to check
for path failures. When a failed path is found and the fault condition is resolved,
the path is automatically restored to service without user intervention and
without disrupting applications. Since it is automatic, no complex mapping is
required, unlike most other vendors' MPIO solutions.

Optimize Load Balancing

PowerPath uniquely uses multiple I/O data paths to share the workload and
automate load balancing to ensure data path efficiently. Performance is
enhanced by intelligently optimizing data access across all available paths. The
workload balancing capabilities of PowerPath ensure that no one path
becomes overloaded while others have underutilized bandwidth, causing an I/O
bottleneck. When one or two paths become busier than others, PowerPath
shifts the I/O traffic while keeping track of the load characteristics from the busy
paths to the others, further enhancing throughput over the already efficient
multipathing capabilities.

PowerPath for the Virtual Data Center

PowerPath and PowerPath Virtual Edition (VE) enable you to standardize on a

single multipathing solution across your entire environment. The base
technology in PowerPath multipathing for physical environments is leveraged to
enhance control and ensure application availability and performance in
VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V environments with PowerPath/VE. PowerPath
and PowerPath/VE effectively manage virtual environments with ever
increasing ratios to scale-out mission-critical applications. With hyper-
consolidation, you may have hundreds or thousands of independent virtual
machines running, including I/O-intensive applications which can disrupt IO
from other applications.

Manually configuring load-balancing policies to ensure that all virtual machines

receive the required I/O response time is very difficult. This situation is further
complicated when tools such as VMware vMotion®, Data Resource Scheduler,
and High-Availability are introduced, as these tools invalidate any assumptions
about which I/O streams will be sharing which data paths.

PowerPath and PowerPath/VE automatically manage all this complexity by

constantly adjusting the I/O path usage to the changes in I/O loads coming
from the virtual machines. Simply assign all devices to all paths and PowerPath
and PowerPath/VE will automatically optimize the overall I/O performance for
you. For VMware deployments, PowerPath/VE is integrated with VMware
vCenter™ Server and Update Manager as well as vSphere auto- deploy and
stateless licensing capabilities to further simplify path management in a virtual
environment.

PowerPath Data Sheet

@2023 Dell Inc., or its subsidiaries
 PowerPath Data Migration Enabler - PowerPath Migration Enabler leverages
PowerPath and Dell data mobility technologies to perform data migrations
without application downtime. PowerPath Migration Enabler is included with
your PowerPath license.

PowerPath Integration with Microsoft Windows Admin Center - PowerPath for

Windows can be inserted into Windows Admin Center (WAC). WAC users
have insight to PowerPath connected devices such as HBAs and Dell storage
arrays while utilizing a single GUI for path management.

PowerPath Management Appliance (PPMA) - PPMA is a virtual appliance

which is delivered to you as a no charge download. PPMA provides a single
pane of glass that provides insight into the health of the data path and licensed
assets.

Dell Services for PowerPath – Dell offers implementation services for single-
host and four-host implementations in addition to custom PowerPath services
to expand its features and functionality.

For Dell and Operating System Support – Review the Dell Support Matrix by
searching “PowerPath” at this link:
https://elabnavigator.dell.com/eln/modernHomeSSM

PowerPath Data Sheet

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PowerPath Data Sheet

@2023 Dell Inc., or its subsidiaries