The device name (sometimes referred to as devname or disk access name) defines the name of a disk device as it is known to the operating system.

In HP-UX 11i v3, the persistent (agile) forms of such devices are located in the /dev/disk and /dev/rdisk directories. To maintain backward compatibility, HP-UX also creates legacy devices in the /dev/dsk and /dev/rdsk directories.

Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) uses the device name to create metadevices in the /dev/vx/[r]dmp directories. DMP uses the metadevices (or DMP nodes) to represent disks that can be accessed by one or more physical paths, perhaps via different controllers. The number of access paths that are available depends on whether the disk is a single disk, or is part of a multiported disk array that is connected to a system.

DMP nodes are not used by the native multi-pathing feature of HP-UX.

If a legacy device special file does not exist for the path to a LUN, DMP generates the DMP subpath name using the c#t#d# format, where the controller number in c# is set to 512 plus the instance number of the target path to which the LUN path belongs, the target is set to t0, and the device number in d# is set to the instance number of the LUN path. As the controller number is greater than 512, DMP subpath names that are generated in this way do not conflict with any legacy device names provided by the operating system. If a DMP subpath name has a controller number that is greater than 512, this implies that the operating system does not provide a legacy device special file for the device.

You can use the vxdisk utility to display the paths that are subsumed by a DMP metadevice, and to display the status of each path (for example, whether it is enabled or disabled).

Device names may also be remapped as enclosure-based names.