Abstract: An embodiment of the invention is a technique to manage failover and failback. A failover of a first path is detected. The first path corresponds to a first device in a plurality of physical devices having M device types. A connection status of the first device is determined if the failover is detected. The connection status is one of a connected status and a disconnected status. The disconnected status corresponds to the failover. The first path is adjusted according to the connection status.

Abstract: An embodiment of the invention is a technique for monitoring via a universal multipath driver (UMD) a first path to one of a plurality of virtual device objects. The virtual device objects are created by the UMD and correspond to a plurality of functional device objects. The functional device objects are created by a plurality of lower level drivers and correspond to a plurality of real physical devices having M device types including an external boot device. The UMD is a functional driver of each of the functional device objects. The lower level drivers control the real physical devices. The UMD detects a failure of the first path to a first virtual device object corresponding to a first real physical device and performs one of failover and failback for the first real physical device.

Abstract: An embodiment of the invention is a technique to manage multipaths for input/output (I/O) devices. An I/O request packet (IRP) from a higher level driver is received. A plurality of paths to a plurality of device objects is managed in response to the IRP using a plurality of lower level drivers. The device objects correspond to physical devices having M device types. The lower level drivers control the physical devices.