Dynamic Path Selection Policy for Multipathing in a Virtualized Environment

摘要

Particular embodiments change a current storage I/O path used by a host computer to access networked storage to an alternative storage I/O path by considering traffic load at a networked switch in the current storage I/O path. The host computer transmits a request to the networked switch in the current storage I/O path to provide network load information currently experiences by the networked switch. After receiving network load information from the networked switch, the host computer then evaluates whether the networked switch is overloaded based on the received network load information. Based on the evaluation, the host computer selects a new alternative storage I/O path to the networked storage that does not include the networked switch, and then forwards future storage I/O communications to the networked storage using the new alternative storage I/O path.