MECHANISM FOR ENABLING ENHANCED FIBRE CHANNEL ERROR RECOVERY ACROSS REDUNDANT PATHS USING SCSI LEVEL COMMANDS

摘要

Systems and methods for performing error recovery in a system utilizing redundant communication links. In one embodiment, a host device (11) is coupled to a sequential device (15) such as a tape drive by a pair of Fibre Channel links (12, 13). The host is configured to associate an identifier with each command. Upon detecting a failure of the transmission of the command via the first link, the host re-transmits the command via the second link. When the link failure is detected, the status of the last command transmitted before the failure is requested. After receiving the status of the command, a request that recovery start (possibly at a point indicated by the status information) is transmitted to the sequential device. If the recovery request is accepted, performance of the command is completed.